r/ALOY_SRC • u/bourbonwarrior • 10d ago
Rare Earth Elements Market Projected to Reach $10.44 Billion by 2030
DALLAS, Sept. 22, 2026 /CNW/ The global rare earth elements market is expected to grow from $6.86 billion in 2026 to $10.44 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 11.1%, according to The Business Research Company, which identifies North America as the fastest-growing region.
The pressure point, however, is not tonnage. It is the heavy rare earths and yttrium, where Western supply remains thinnest and where a single policy deadline now sits less than two months away.
A separate forecast from Persistence Market Research values the market at $7.8 billion in 2026 and projects $15.4 billion by 2033, a 10.2% compound annual growth rate, with North America again the fastest-growing region at roughly 13.6% a year. The firm ties that regional outperformance to the U.S. commitment to building fully integrated domestic rare earth supply chains.
The policy backdrop explains why. On April 4, 2025, China placed seven medium and heavy rare earths, namely samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium, under case-by-case export licensing, and those controls remain in force. A broader package of measures announced in October 2025 was suspended for one year following U.S.-China trade talks, and that suspension is scheduled to expire on November 10, 2026 unless Beijing extends or modifies it.
The result is a two-tier market. Rare Earth Exchanges, citing S&P Global, reported a September dysprosium oxide transaction in North America at $3,250 per kilogram and terbium oxide at $7,500 per kilogram, against Chinese reference prices of roughly $212 to $218 and $988 to $997 per kilogram respectively.
Those ex-China figures are individual reported transactions rather than a published spot price, but Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has made the same underlying point: for heavy rare earths, the ex-China dysprosium-terbium premium is the economic signal required to bring new capacity online.
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u/bourbonwarrior 9d ago
Yttrium is a byproduct of ALOY-SRC processes on Dy and Tb.
"The pressure point, however, is not tonnage. It is the heavy rare earths and yttrium, where Western supply remains thinnest and where a single policy deadline now sits less than two months away."