On June 19th, 2024, the International Rare Earths Symposium presented by REIA (Rare Earths Industry Association), JOGMEC and MIRU (this website) was held in Toranomon, Tokyo. Once the door opened at 8 am, all seats as many as nearly 300 were immediately taken. The symposium commenced with speeches from chairpersons of REIA and JOGMEC respectively, followed by some presentations covering topics such as approaches to critical minerals in Europe, the future of CRMA and so on.

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In the panel session, the Embassy of Canada, the Australian Embassy, the SAFE Center for Critical Minerals Strategy　and professors from the Colorado School of Mines appeared and the direction of partnerships between governments and private sectors towards critical minerals including rare earths was discussed.

In addition, powerful presentations were also received by Neo Performance Metals, Iluka Resources of Australia, and MP Materials of the U.S. The key common points from those companies’ presentations included what kind of actions Western countries were able to take within the rare earths market, which is currently highly dependent on China, and whether it would be realistically possible to get out of the reliance on China. Furthermore, discussions on the possibility of making new applications for rare earths were actively exchanged both inside and outside the venue. 

The topics will be reported again with further details on the MIRU website. The conference runs for 2 consecutive days, the 19th and 20th.

（iruniverse tanamachi, translated by A.C.）

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