A site close to Kruger National Park in South Africa is becoming a testing ground for US attempts to fight China’s global dominance in critical minerals.
Washington has committed to finance a little-known London-listed miner hoping to extract rare earths — a set of 17 minerals key to clean energy technologies — from the chalky stacks outside the safari park, as the US seeks to challenge China’s runaway lead in accessing the metals globally.
But a 63 per cent drop in rare earth prices since the start of 2022 has called into question the project’s ability to raise funding. The fate of the $300mn mine at Phalaborwa may echo that of others aiming to extract critical minerals for the west, and raises the question of whether US support is sufficient to build up a counterweight to Beijing.