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What they make, where they produce, the materials that matter — then what is coming, what it would do to the business, and the moves available. Sector: magnets motors. Company profile →
Less Common Metals (LCM) is a UK rare-earth metal and alloy producer based at Hooton Park, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Since 18 November 2025 it has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Rare Earth, Inc. (Nasdaq: USAR), acquired from prior parent Indian Ocean Rare Metals Pte.
Ltd. (Singapore) to feed USAR's Stillwater, Oklahoma magnet facility as part of a mine-to-magnet strategy. It sits mid/downstream in the magnet supply chain: it reduces separated rare-earth oxides to metal via molten-salt electrolysis, then strip-casts the metal into master alloys — principally NdFeB (neodymium-iron-boron) and SmCo (samarium-cobalt) — the feedstock sintered or bonded into permanent magnets for motors, wind turbines and defence applications. LCM says it is the only Western-world company strip-casting NdFeB alloy at commercial scale (two 600 kg furnaces), producing Nd/NdPr metal commercially since 2017 at 120+ tonnes/year. The site also runs a hydrogen decrepitation furnace to process recycled magnet feedstock, and LCM is a partner (not owner) in the REACT-UK magnet-recycling consortium alongside Mkango Rare Earths UK, HyProMag, EMR Group, Jaguar Land Rover and the University of Birmingham — a ~£6.5m project roughly half UK-government funded under the DRIVE35 programme.
Verbatim from the dossier's “What they do” section — sources on the company profile.
This is where Less Common Metals produces — approximate output shares from its dossier — not where it sells. Sales geography is not yet in our corpus for any company, so we cannot compute exposure to measures that bite on where products ship: an extraterritorial re-export rule follows the shipment and its material content, not the factory. Where such a measure touches its materials, the policy sections below flag it — but its sales-side incidence is not computable yet, and we say so rather than substitute the production map for it.
Of everything in its products, we track the critical inputs — the materials whose supply is concentrated in few countries, policy-exposed, or hard to substitute — because those are the ones a single measure can move. Each carries its role in the product, quoted from the dossier's own exposure note.
Dysprosium — added to NdFeB alloy in small quantities to retain magnet performance at high operating temperature (traction motors, wind turbines); heavy rare earth with production even more concentrated than light rare earths.
Terbium — used alongside dysprosium as a heavy-rare-earth dopant in high-coercivity NdFeB magnets; among the most supply-constrained rare earths globally.
Neodymium / praseodymium (as NdPr) — core feedstock for LCM's flagship NdFeB strip-cast alloy; China dominates global NdPr separation and metal capacity, making feedstock security LCM's central supply-chain risk.
Neodymium / praseodymium (as NdPr) — core feedstock for LCM's flagship NdFeB strip-cast alloy; China dominates global NdPr separation and metal capacity, making feedstock security LCM's central supply-chain risk.
Cobalt — alloying element in LCM's SmCo master-alloy product line (used where NdFeB's lower temperature tolerance is unsuitable, e.g.
Scope. The non-critical remainder of the bill of materials — structural steel, polymers, glass and the like — is not tracked here because it is not supply-constrained: this section covers the constrained inputs, which is where policy risk concentrates, not a full bill of materials.
The top 5 are ranked mechanically — what the instrument does (its transmission class: an export ban is not a reporting duty), × how close to law (stage-derived likelihood band, never a probability) × how much of your tracked bill of materials it touches. Each unfolds as a chain: trigger → what it hits → the response the instrument actually calls for. A measure touching a material you produce can be an opportunity, not a threat.
CD · stage passed-vote → high likelihood · touches cobalt · flagged 11 Aug 2026, 55d pending
On 29 June 2026 DRC's Vice-Prime Minister for the National Economy (Daniel Mukoko Samba), Minister of Mines (Louis Watum Kabamba) and Minister of Foreign Trade (Julien Paluku Kahongya) jointly signed an arrêté interministériel regulating the commercialisation, export and nomenclature of marketable mining products, which for the first time BANS the export of unprocessed copper and cobalt concentrates outright — replacing the entire framework adopted 4 August 2023. Mining-rights holders, processing entities and buying counters (comptoirs) may seek a ministerial derogation to export less-elaborated products for up to one year, assessed against national mining policy and the technical/economic constraints of each mineral. A new tax regime for economically significant mining byproducts is introduced with a 3-month transition period. This is broader and more foundational than the existing filed/queued DRC cobalt-specific instruments — it is a national concentrate EXPORT BAN (not a quota or hydroxide-specific measure) covering BOTH copper and cobalt, issued under joint Economy/Mines/Trade authority rather than ARECOMS sectoral rulemaking. DRC = priority-tier chokepoint (cobalt, copper, tantalum). Severity 4 expected (national ban, dual-metal, replaces a 3-year-old framework).
source ↗Cobalt — alloying element in LCM's SmCo master-alloy product line (used where NdFeB's lower temperature tolerance is unsuitable, e.g.
The prohibition covers the raw/unprocessed form; material processed in DR Congo stays exportable under the order's own exemption — so a DR Congo processing route remains open alongside the alternatives below.
DR Congo supplies 74% of world cobalt mining — that share of your supply base is what this measure cuts off.
Supply outside 🇨🇩 CD: 🇮🇩 ID 66% · 🇷🇺 RU 12% · 🇲🇬 MG 6.1% · 🇵🇭 PH 5.6% — shares renormalised after removing CD.
CD · stage passed-vote → high likelihood · touches cobalt · flagged 20 Jul 2026, 77d pending
On ~29 June 2026 the Autorité de Régulation et de Contrôle des Marchés des Substances Minérales Stratégiques (ARECOMS) ordered that all first-half-2026 cobalt export quotas left unused by 30 June 2026 be forfeited and recovered, with a 5 July 2026 cutoff, and reallocated into ARECOMS's discretionary "strategic quota" pool (already ~10% of the 96,600 t/yr authorised volume) earmarked for national-interest local-processing projects. This is an escalation/operationalisation of the filed 2025-02-22 ARECOMS cobalt quota system: it concentrates additional volume under state discretionary control, tightens the effective free-market allocation for producers (Glencore/KCC, CMOC, ERG) on the world's dominant cobalt chokepoint (~76% of mine supply), and — via the linked customs-notification malfunction that blocked quota-linked export declarations after 1 July 2026 — created a real short-run supply interruption. IPTM action would be an AMENDMENT to 2025-02-22-drc-arecoms-cobalt-export-ban-quota-system.
source ↗Cobalt — alloying element in LCM's SmCo master-alloy product line (used where NdFeB's lower temperature tolerance is unsuitable, e.g.
DR Congo supplies 74% of world cobalt mining — that share of your supply base is what this measure cuts off.
Supply outside 🇨🇩 CD: 🇮🇩 ID 66% · 🇷🇺 RU 12% · 🇲🇬 MG 6.1% · 🇵🇭 PH 5.6% — shares renormalised after removing CD.
US · stage awaiting-signature → high likelihood · touches neodymium · flagged 15 Jun 2026, 112d pending
Framework agreed "in principle" between Trump and Xi following June 5, 2026 call and subsequent negotiations; Trump stated June 11, 2026 "Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me" — China to supply "full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, up front" to US; if formally enacted, would suspend or ease China's April 2025 rare earth export licensing regime (filed 2025-04-04-china-mofcom-rare-earth-export-licensing) for US-bound shipments; China's Vice Commerce Minister Li Chenggang confirmed "in principle" framework consensus from the June 5 Trump-Xi call; tariff framework: US 55% / China 10%; China April 2025 rare earth controls (heavy/medium REEs, including Dy/Tb NdFeB magnets, SmCo magnets) remain formally active — no MOFCOM suspension announcement found as of June 15, 2026; the deal is political but not yet implemented as a formal regulation or bilateral MOU
source ↗Neodymium / praseodymium (as NdPr) — core feedstock for LCM's flagship NdFeB strip-cast alloy; China dominates global NdPr separation and metal capacity, making feedstock security LCM's central supply-chain risk.
United States supplies 13% of world neodymium mining — that share of your supply base is what this measure cuts off.
Supply outside 🇺🇸 US: 🇨🇳 CN 83% · 🇦🇺 AU 8.9% · 🇲🇲 MM 6.7% · 🇹🇭 TH 1.4% — shares renormalised after removing US.
TZ · stage awaiting-signature → high likelihood · touches neodymiumcobalt · flagged 26 Jun 2026, 101d pending
TZ Finance Bill establishes the Mineral Research Fund capitalised at 10% of gross mineral revenue (~TZS 141 billion/yr at 2025 collection levels); amends the Income Tax Act to formally recognise tax exemptions granted under individual mining Framework Agreements and introduces standard operating procedures — reduces discretionary government risk for large mining investors (Panda Hill niobium, graphite juniors, Buzwagi gold); parallel VAT amendments give equivalent statutory certainty for VAT exemptions; taken together, the bill moves Tanzania from discretionary tax administration toward a rule-of-law-based investor regime for all critical-mineral projects; budget targets Tanzania for top-4 niobium producer status (Panda Hill DA already signed March 24, 2026) and 50% geophysical survey coverage by 2030
source ↗Neodymium / praseodymium (as NdPr) — core feedstock for LCM's flagship NdFeB strip-cast alloy; China dominates global NdPr separation and metal capacity, making feedstock security LCM's central supply-chain risk.
Cobalt — alloying element in LCM's SmCo master-alloy product line (used where NdFeB's lower temperature tolerance is unsuitable, e.g.
The filed text doesn't state this instrument's mechanism clearly enough to classify, so we don't guess a response — the measure text above is the read.
BR · stage passed-vote → high likelihood · touches neodymiumcobalt · flagged 19 Jun 2026, 108d pending
First federal statutory framework for critical and strategic minerals; establishes CMCE oversight committee, R$2B Mineral Activity Guarantee Fund (0. 2% gross revenue levy on critical-mineral companies), mandatory 0. 3% gross revenue R&D investment, 20% tax credits for domestic mineral transformation projects; limits raw-mineral exports where domestic processing capacity exists; covers niobium explicitly (CBMM/CMOC supply ~85% of global niobium — Brazil is a structural chokepoint); Chamber passed 343-97 on 7 May 2026, Senate review pending
source ↗Neodymium / praseodymium (as NdPr) — core feedstock for LCM's flagship NdFeB strip-cast alloy; China dominates global NdPr separation and metal capacity, making feedstock security LCM's central supply-chain risk.
Cobalt — alloying element in LCM's SmCo master-alloy product line (used where NdFeB's lower temperature tolerance is unsuitable, e.g.
This changes the form of what Brazil exports, not whether you can buy: raw/unprocessed exports are restricted while domestically processed material stays available — that is the measure's own mechanism. Your Brazil-origin raw feed becomes processed-only; the route is a value-added purchase or a Brazil processing partner, not a supplier switch.
Secondary — only if you need to avoid Brazil entirely: neodymium supply outside BR is 🇨🇳 CN 72%, 🇺🇸 US 14%, 🇦🇺 AU 7.7% (shares renormalised after removing BR); cobalt supply outside BR is 🇨🇩 CD 78%, 🇮🇩 ID 15%, 🇷🇺 RU 2.6% (shares renormalised after removing BR).
President Peter Mutharika signed an executive order (dated 23 Oct 2025, effective 21 Oct 2025, announced at Sanjika Palace during a cabinet swearing-in) prohibiting the export of raw/unprocessed mine…
Senate-approved package of amendments to Kazakhstan's Code on Subsoil and Subsoil Use (No.
Royalty near-triples on Manono lithium project (Zijin Mining/La Cominière, DRC's first industrial lithium mine commissioning June 2026) and all DRC tantalum, niobium, tungsten, uranium, REE operators…
Madagascar's Council of Ministers approved resumption of mining-permit issuance on ~28-29 Jan 2026, ending a moratorium in place since 2010 (imposed during a political transition amid mining-title sp…
Minister of Finance, acting under s.
Establishes the first legally binding "safe level" benchmark for EU strategic stocks of each of the 17 strategic raw materials listed in the CRMA Annex I; benchmarks used as reference by Member State…
Revises 30 CFR Part 580 to streamline 10 provisions governing prospecting, leasing, and operations for hard minerals (manganese nodules, cobalt-rich crusts, seafloor massive sulfides) on the US Outer…
Mongolia's cabinet approved and submitted to the State Great Khural a draft amending ~40% of the 2006 Minerals Law: (i) cuts the maximum exploration-licence duration from 12 to 6 years while raising…
Under the RESourceEU action plan (COM(2025) 945, adopted 3 Dec 2025 and already filed as 2025-12-03-eu-resourceeu-action-plan-com-2025-945), the European Commission committed to PROPOSE, by Q2 2026,…
RESourceEU (COM(2025) 945, 3 Dec 2025) commits the Commission to establish a **European Critical Raw Materials Centre** in early 2026 with four functions: (a) generate **systemic market intelligence…
Tanzania's Ministry of Minerals (Minister Anthony Mavunde) has FINALISED a Critical and Strategic Minerals Strategy that takes legal effect only once the Government formally approves and gazettes the…
Draft law amending Morocco's 2015 Mining Code (led by the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Minister Leila Benali), with public consultations reported open since ~Feb 2025.
Binding plurilateral trade agreement among like-minded partners (US, EU, Japan and FORGE coalition members) establishing coordinated trade measures for critical mineral supply chains — including bord…
Second wave of CRMA Art.
On 10 July 2026 the African Development Bank Group, with the African Union Commission, the AfCFTA Secretariat and UNECA, convened African ministers of mining/energy/industry in Abidjan for the "Minis…
If adopted, creates a unified mining regulatory framework across Cameroon, CAR, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Chad — harmonising licensing regimes, fiscal terms, transparency oblig…
At Myanmar military-government head Min Aung Hlaing's early-June-2026 New Delhi visit (his first India visit since the 2021 coup), critical minerals and rare earths featured explicitly on the formal…
All DRC mining operators (Glencore, CMOC, Ivanhoe Mines, Eurasian Resources Group, and 50+ others) must transfer 5% of share capital to Congolese employees by July 31, 2026 or face permit suspension;…
Saudi sovereign mining vehicle Manara Minerals (PIF + Ma'aden JV) is in advanced negotiations to acquire a 15-20% equity stake (deal value ~USD 1.
Ministry of Mines issued operational guidelines for the Mining Sector Reforms component under Scheme for Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment (SASCI) FY2026-27, with total ₹5,000 crore…
Full replacement of the Mining Act 1992 with sweeping new statute: state acquires up to 30% equity in any new mining project (Kumul Minerals free-carry); special mining leases (SML) issued for initia…
3 of 61 filed an explicit in-force stage; the rest (flagged below) default from an absent stage: field, not a filed assertion. Each links to the register entry with its primary source.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 [2026] — country-specific dual-use export controls on Japan claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China State Council enacts unified Regulations on Export Control of Dual-Use Items claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
For a material it buys, a restriction tightens supply and raises input cost — a headwind. Scores are footprint-adjusted and buyer-relative (0–100, higher = more exposed).
Its customers sit in ev motors, wind turbines — read via the graph's permanent magnets node, the nearest equivalent of its sector. A measure supporting those sectors supports demand for this company's products; one restricting them puts that demand at risk. The sign shown is the mechanical read — click through to judge whether a measure protects or constrains the customer.
For each bought material: the ex-controller producers a procurement team can actually reach, from the alternatives map (derived 2026-10-05), viability-gated — each name carries its deployment status (with the verbatim dossier phrase it rests on), a capture check against the measure being escaped, and any contracted-capacity evidence. Deployable-now names sort first; a developer with zero tonnes is shown demoted, never dressed up as a switch you can make today. Tradability is inherited from the listing layer, never guessed.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 [2026] — country-specific dual-use export controls on Japan claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
+15 more tradable names, ranked below these by the same gate.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 [2026] — country-specific dual-use export controls on Japan claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
+14 more tradable names, ranked below these by the same gate.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 [2026] — country-specific dual-use export controls on Japan claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
+12 more tradable names, ranked below these by the same gate.
⚠ Extraterritorial measure — switching supplier origin may not exit its scope.
China MOFCOM Announcement No. 1 [2026] — country-specific dual-use export controls on Japan claims reach over foreign-made goods (“extraterritorial”) — the rule follows the material, not the seller, so an alternative outside the issuer can still be captured if its products contain or are made with in-scope inputs. Verify each alternative's feedstock origin before treating it as an exit.
+11 more tradable names, ranked below these by the same gate.
+26 more tradable names, ranked below these by the same gate.
lib/policy-transmission.ts): an export prohibition in the measure's name/text → supply restriction; a raw/unprocessed-export limit or local-processing mandate → beneficiation (form change, not unavailability); reporting/disclosure/due-diligence language → compliance obligation; tariff/trade-remedy language → import cost; subsidy/fast-track/relaxation language → support; investment-screening/M&A language → investment control. When the text carries no signal we fall back to the action-type default and label the chip inferred; when neither exists the card says so and derives no response — we never assert a class the evidence doesn't support.lib/iptm-material-country-production.ts; mining stage preferred, refining as fallback — the stage and source year are in each figure's hover text). Ex-issuer supply removes the ISSUING country and renormalises the remaining listed shares (so they sum to 100% of what's left) — alternatives to the country making the rule, never a default ex-China list. Where the issuer holds no measurable share, the card says so plainly instead of implying supply loss.lib/alternative-viability.ts): each named alternative carries a deployment status — operating / ramping / restarting / development / unknown — derived from word-boundary signal phrases in its own dossier (“operating since 1896”, “restarting the … mine”, “FID taken”), and the verbatim matched phrase is shown as the basis so the claim is auditable; a dossier with no signal stays unknown, never guessed. Any evidenced production date is quoted verbatim (“first production targeted H2 2029” → “no tonnes before 2029”) — we never synthesize one. A measure whose own text claims extraterritorial / re-export / de-minimis / foreign-direct-product / percentage-of-value scope triggers the origin-switching warning above the list: such a rule follows the material, not the seller, so a foreign-made alternative can still be captured. Same-issuer register actions targeting an alternative's country and material mark it may be captured, with the entries linked. “Capacity partly committed” lines quote the dossier verbatim — we hold no structured free-capacity numbers and never imply a utilisation figure.How MacroLens tracks this for you. The policy register files new measures daily and this page recomputes from it — the same chokepoints are monitored live on the watchlist and in the full register.