SmCo Magnet Price Concerns
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In March 2021, the price of neodymium metal reached a 9-year high, having risen by 42% since the start of the year (Trading Economics). As of early May 2021, the price began to drop slightly, but the short term and long-term projected price trends remain uncertain.
SmCo Magnet and Magnetic Assembly Design
The company is able to help limit the effect of price uncertainty by focusing on maintaining a diverse supply chain, effective production, and cost-efficient engineering advice.
When designing a magnet assembly, the cost of the magnetic material involved may ultimately only reflect a third or less of the greater system cost. In this scenario, overall costs are reduced ability to, for example, provide advice regarding cost effective shaft design vs magnet geometric profiling. There are other various cost-saving decisions that can be made as well. For example, looking at Halbach arrays, this type of design is typically used in high performance rotors, which greatly increases the difficulty of traditional assembly and, as a result, cost. However, these types of designs are excellent for in-house post-assembly magnetization, where there will be significant savings in time and cost, as well as de-risking the entire production process. To engineer the optimum solution for each unique application.
The usage of grain boundary diffused dysprosium has been a critical area of magnetic technology development. Grain boundary diffused dysprosium is able to enhance the coercivity of a neodymium magnet without using traditional methods that cause a drop in the total energy product. During this secondary manufacturing process, the heavy rare earth element dysprosium is concentrated into the grain boundaries of the magnet microstructure. By doing this, there is not only a performance increase, but also a cost decrease. By using less dysprosium in this method, the result is a more stable price compared to traditional method magnets.
Additionally, we seek to minimize costs and maximize performance by continuously seeking out innovative new technology and manufacturing techniques.
Neodymium: A Key Raw Material
Neodymium is a critical rare earth material that is widely used in rare earth magnet applications in automotive components, electronics, and, of particular note, the growing clean-energy sector that relies on technology such as wind power and electric vehicles. Currently, 80% of rare earths are sourced and produced in China. However, the U.S. is making it a top priority to reduce dependence on China for the sourcing and production of rare earth materials. Reliance on China is undesirable due to both economic and political concerns.
In 2019, global consumption of neodymium iron boron magnets was 105,300 tons. It is expected that consumption will grow by 7.5% each year, and the growing demand for use in electric vehicles is expected to account for 40% of the total by 2030. Currently, each electric vehicles uses between 4 to 11 lbs of rare earth magnets. According to the International Energy Agency, there could be 230 million electric vehicles worldwide by the year 2030. At an average of 7.7lbs of rare earth magnets per vehicle, this would equate to 805,000 tons total.
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