Bomatec visits Asian Metal

On Friday the 18th of May, Pascal Puenzieux, a member of the Bomatec Permanent Magnet team, visited Asian Metal’s London Office for Lunch and a discussion on future trends in global rare earth markets. Since its conception in 1993, Bomatec AG has grown to become one of the significant distributors of customized rare earth magnets within the European market. With offices in both China and the US, Bomatec is poised to realize substantial growth during the next few years as global markets see rising demand for critical downstream applications of permanent magnets.

Pascal commented on the criticality of the development of permanent magnet raw material supply sources outside of China. While he admitted the emergence of Molycorp, Lynas, and Great Western Minerals Group will help to alleviate demand pressures for neodymium metal, he remains concerned about future supply sources for dysprosium. Although he believes demand destruction, R&D, and production process optimization will help to reduce global dependency on dysprosium, he added that the material is likely to remain critical to a wide range of NdFeB magnet applications in the upcoming years. He is interested to see how the new Chinese invoice system will impact the domestic production of neodymium and dysprosium and whether or not it will be able to cut back on the problem of illicit mining activity.

Pascal acknowledged the importance of Asian Metal’s pricing information and critical market analysis to Bomatec’s development strategies and procurement policies.