A wave of consolidation is moving through the critical minerals sector, and much of the discussion has focused on financing and dealmaking. Tony Blumberg sees something deeper: evidence of an industrial supply-chain problem, and of the importance of the capabilities that sit between a mineral deposit and a finished product.
For decades, mining projects were evaluated largely through traditional measures such as grade, tonnage, capital expenditure, operating costs, and potential offtake. The implicit assumption was that once concentrate was produced, processing would take place elsewhere.
That assumption does not capture the full structure of a modern critical-minerals supply chain.
The relevant question is not simply who owns the resource. It is also who controls the stages that turn that resource into a usable industrial material.
Goldman Sachs Research has described the emergence of a “mine-to-magnet” strategy in rare earths, with companies seeking greater control across extraction, separation, metallisation and magnet manufacturing. Its analysts also identify strategic M&A and joint ventures as part of that activity, including transactions involving heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium.
For Tony Blumberg, this is fundamentally an industrial story.
China’s export controls have made the issue more visible. In April 2025, China’s Ministry of Commerce introduced controls covering a range of medium and heavy rare-earth-related items, including terbium and dysprosium. Further measures announced later in 2025 expanded the scope of controls before being suspended for one year in November. The April measures remained in force.
“That is not simply a commodity cycle,” Tony Blumberg argues. “It is policy operating directly on an industrial input.”
Integration is an engineering claim before it is a financial one
The phrase “mine-to-magnet” can make vertical integration sound straightforward. It is not.
Between a mine and a permanent magnet sit multiple technically demanding stages: beneficiation, chemical separation, oxide production, metal and alloy production, magnet manufacturing and qualification with end users.
A successful laboratory process is not necessarily a successful commercial process. Recoveries, impurity management, reagent consumption, waste treatment, throughput and equipment reliability all become critical once production moves beyond the laboratory.
The distinction matters because an integrated project is not defined simply by adding processing facilities to a resource statement. It requires the technical capability to operate the various stages of the chain at commercial scale.
This is why Tony Blumberg believes that assessing an integrated developer solely by the size or grade of its mineral resource does not capture the full industrial equation.
The relevant capability may lie as much in the processing circuit, engineering team, operating history, technical knowledge and customer qualification process as in the orebody itself.
One way to obtain those capabilities is to build them. Another is to acquire or partner with an organisation that already possesses them. That helps explain why current M&A activity extends beyond deposits and into processing, metallisation and magnet-making businesses.
Why Brownfield capability matters
The West is sometimes described as having to start again from zero in rare-earth processing. Tony Blumberg’s view is more nuanced.
Western processing capability did not disappear entirely. In several cases, industrial knowledge, facilities and technical expertise survived, even as economics caused production to decline or capacity to become underused.
Solvay’s La Rochelle facility in France is one example. The plant has a long history in rare-earth processing and is now part of Europe’s effort to develop additional supply-chain capacity. Reuters reported in September 2026 that La Rochelle is one of the few plants outside China capable of separating all 17 rare-earth elements, and described its processing expertise as a strategic asset.
The lesson is not that every brownfield site is automatically superior to a greenfield project. It is that existing industrial infrastructure can contain capabilities that would otherwise have to be recreated.
A brownfield site may already have permits, utilities, waste-handling systems, equipment, trained operators, and customer relationships. Depending on the project, those assets can reduce some of the schedule, permitting, and operational requirements associated with establishing an entirely new facility.
The underlying resource base puts this in perspective. The US Geological Survey estimated global rare-earth mine production at approximately 390,000 tonnes in 2025, while reported global reserves exceeded 85 million tonnes, measured in rare-earth-oxide equivalent.
The implication is straightforward: geological availability and industrial availability are not the same thing.
The state has become a capital partner
The other major development is the role of government.
For much of the modern mining industry, governments typically provided regulation, permitting, research support, and, in some cases, grants or tax incentives. Critical minerals have brought governments deeper into the financing and development of supply-chain infrastructure.
The US government’s support for USA Rare Earth illustrates this change. In June 2026, the Department of Commerce announced a final award providing up to $277 million in federal incentives, alongside a loan agreement for up to $1.3 billion. The programme supports the company’s vertically integrated mine-to-magnet project.
In practical terms, the government is now participating directly in the financing of strategic industrial capacity.
That involvement is rooted in the economics of industrial supply chains. One recurring problem has been the difficulty of keeping strategically important processing capacity commercially viable against lower-cost, highly concentrated foreign supply.
Once conversion capacity is treated as strategic infrastructure rather than simply another commodity facility, the policy calculation changes. The question is no longer solely whether a facility can compete under a given set of market conditions, but what industrial role it plays within a domestic or allied supply chain.
Capability, not tonnage
The critical-minerals debate has often started with the question of how much material sits in the ground. That is only the beginning of the supply chain.
The chain runs from deposit to mine, from mine to concentrate, from concentrate to separated oxides, from oxides to metals and alloys, and from there to magnets and other finished products. A constraint can arise at any one of those stages.
This is particularly significant in rare earths because processing expertise, chemical separation capacity and downstream manufacturing capability are more geographically concentrated than the underlying geological resources. The International Energy Agency reported in July 2026 that China accounted for about 85% of global rare-earth refining in 2025, down from more than 90% in 2023, as new projects in the United States and expanded output in Malaysia came online. The agency projects that share could fall to around 70% by 2035 if planned projects proceed as scheduled.
That illustrates the central distinction in Tony Blumberg’s analysis.
A mineral resource is a geological asset. A supply chain is an industrial system.
The strategic question is therefore not simply how many tonnes exist in the ground. It is how those tonnes are converted into the materials and components that industry requires, and which jurisdictions and organisations possess the capabilities, infrastructure and processing capacity required at each stage.
The mine remains an essential part of that chain. But the mine alone does not constitute the supply chain. The downstream stages therefore deserve the same analytical attention as the resource itself, particularly separation, metallisation, alloy production and magnet manufacturing.
Ore is abundant. Refining capacity is more concentrated. And industrial competence is difficult to replicate.
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