Rare Earth Exchanges

Dustin Olsen

We're taking you to the heart of one of the most critical and underappreciated battles shaping our modern world: the rare earth element supply chain. Discover the high-stakes dynamics that are fueling international competition, from China’s commanding grip on processing, refining, and value-added production of rare earth elements to the industries and innovations that depend on these indispensable resources. Each week, we expose the geoscience, geopolitics, and economic forces behind the West's growing reliance on China—forces that are hidden in plain sight but impossible to ignore.

  1. 2d ago

    S2 E84: Europe Throws Away Half the Nickel It Imports | Marco Bersani, Circular Materials

    Europe imports nickel from Indonesia, refines it, uses it - and then throws half of it into a landfill without it ever doing a single day of work. Marco Bersani's company gets paid to take that metal back out of the water. Marco Bersani is CEO and Co-Founder of Circular Materials, an Italian company recovering critical metals from industrial wastewater using SWaP (Supercritical Water Precipitation), a metal-agnostic process that precipitates better than 99.9% of dissolved metals into a fine powder. The European Commission named it a Strategic Project under the Critical Raw Materials Act. Hosts Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor dig into the grade of the resource, why nobody else has gone after it, the dual-revenue model that makes metal prices almost irrelevant, and the plan to bring three or four sites to the United States. In this episode: - Why industrial wastewater carries 1-10% metal content (10,000-100,000 ppm) when miners dream of a fraction of a percent - How Circular Materials gets paid hundreds of euros to take 100 kg of dissolved nickel, instead of buying feedstock like every other recycler - Europe loses an estimated 12,000-15,000 tonnes of mixed critical metals a year this way, and the US market looks three to four times larger - Recovery rates today: roughly 70% for non-gold precious metals, and well below 5% for non-precious metals - Copper, nickel and chromium are the triad, plus a large position in the very small ruthenium market - Why the major wastewater engineering firms reclaim water but not metal, and why customers asked for this as a service rather than a licensed technology - What it actually took to earn EU Strategic Project status under the Critical Raw Materials Act Guest: Marco Bersani, CEO & Co-Founder, Circular Materials s.r.l. Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com 🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.

  2. Aug 27

    S2 E83: The Oil Embargo Was a Car Crash. The Mineral War Is Cancer. | Tomasz Nadrowski, Amvest Terraden

    In 1973, the oil embargo hit the West like a car crash — sudden, loud, impossible to miss. China's control of critical minerals is the opposite: it's cancer. It grew for thirty years, and most of the West only noticed once it started to hurt. Tomasz Nadrowski is a portfolio manager at Amvest Terraden, where he runs an equity strategy that starts with geopolitics, and the author of "Mineral War: China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction." He argues this is not a trade dispute and not a competition. It is a war in the strict Clausewitz sense: it became one the moment the West finally reacted. Dustin and Daniel dig into how the monopoly got built, why the West handed it over, and the one Chinese advantage he believes the West can actually beat. In this episode: - Why monopoly in commodities is normal — and weaponization is the line China crossed - The push factor nobody talks about: Western capital markets refused to fund the midstream for forty years, and the G7 flagged the risk back in 2003 - Lynas's Kuantan capex came in roughly a third higher for one reason — you can no longer buy Chinese equipment - Cost of capital is the one Chinese advantage the West can beat; cheap labor, cheap land, a managed currency and subsidies are not winnable - What a German carmaker's procurement chief told him in Frankfurt: "we will always buy from the cheapest source" - Why downstream OEMs out-lobby the mining industry, and how that already killed critical-minerals policy twice - It is not just magnets: inverters, capacitors, coating hardware, refining equipment, legacy chips, track-laying machines - The 14th Five-Year Plan's innovation centers, and why what gets invented in China now stays in China - DNA sequencing costs 500 to 1,000 dollars in the West; China subsidizes it to 50 - Externalizing the US tax code so American capital can fund Australian and Canadian projects, and harmonizing tariffs by HS code instead of blunt country-wide actions - Why China's decision to apply its restrictions worldwide, rather than only to the US, may have been its biggest strategic error Guest: Tomasz Nadrowski, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Amvest Terraden Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com 🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.

  3. Aug 20

    S2 E82: They Cracked the Rock No One Could Crack | Melissa Sanderson, American Rare Earths

    For years the rule in rare earths was simple: nobody cracks allanite. American Rare Earths says it just did — at Halleck Creek, Wyoming, the largest known rare earth deposit in North America. Melissa Sanderson, director at American Rare Earths and co-chair of the Critical Minerals Institute, returns to Rare Earth Exchanges to catch Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor up on a fast six months: a pilot plant with the Saskatchewan Research Council, a planned NASDAQ listing by year-end, a $456M EXIM Bank letter of interest, a $7.1M Wyoming state grant, and new heavy-rare-earth finds. Then the harder truth — the technical problems are largely solved, and the one risk that remains is capital. In this episode: Why hard-rock allanite was considered impossible — and what Wyoming's Red Mountain Pluton changedThe $456M EXIM letter of interest and the $7.1M Wyoming grant behind the push to productionWhy samarium and yttrium make Halleck Creek's deposit exceptionalWhy capital — not geology or permitting — is now the number-one riskThe hidden costs (insurance, supply cuts, China's November deadline) buyers still aren't countingGuest: Melissa Sanderson, Director, American Rare Earths; Co-Chair, Critical Minerals Institute Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.

  4. Aug 13

    S2 E81: Malaysia Has 16 Million Tons of Rare Earths — 70% Is Off-Limits | Tricia Yeoh

    Malaysia is sitting on an estimated 16.1 million tons of rare earths, but roughly 70% of it lies inside permanent forest reserves — and the country's own fragmented governance may keep it from capitalizing on the rest. Dr. Tricia Yeoh, Director of the Asian Institute for Policy and Engagement at the University of Nottingham Malaysia, joins Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor to unpack her ISEAS paper, Ambition Without Alignment. She explains how land, licenses, and royalties sit with Malaysia's states while exports and security sit with the federal government — and why those two levels are increasingly pulling in different directions as foreign governments negotiate state by state. In this episode: Why an estimated 70% of Malaysia's rare earths sit inside protected forest reservesHow Malaysia's federal-state split divides control over land, royalties, and exportsThe three policy bottlenecks stalling the midstream and downstreamWhy the raw-rare-earth export ban both protects value and deters upstream explorersWhy the case for a dedicated national rare earth office keeps getting strongerWhy "pick the US or China" is the wrong question — and Malaysia's answer is "both" Guest: Dr. Tricia Yeoh, Director, Asian Institute for Policy and Engagement (AIPE), University of Nottingham Malaysia Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.

  5. Aug 6

    S2 E80: Why America Only Graduates 200 Mining Engineers a Year

    The conversation about America's rare earth ambitions usually centers on ore, mines, and processing capacity. Professor Aaron Noble — department head of Mining & Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech — argues the real ceiling is people. Aaron joins Dustin and Daniel to explain why talent is the most overlooked link in the critical minerals supply chain, why tiny markets stall investment, and how a $10M Department of Energy project is mapping Appalachia's critical mineral endowment. In this episode: The "cake" analogy — why rare earths are the cinnamon and nutmeg of the materials economy, and the second layer nobody talks aboutThe negative feedback loop that stalls rare earth R&D: tiny markets get tiny investmentThe 200-vs-10,000 engineering gap and what it means over a 30-year horizonInside the $10M DOE "Expand Appalachia" critical-minerals mapping projectWhy the Aclara Resources demonstration plant on campus is really an investment in people Guest: Aaron Noble, Professor & Department Head, Mining & Minerals Engineering, Virginia Tech Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly. 🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts Disclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.

  6. Jul 30

    S2 E79: The Bacteria Pulling Rare Earths From Catalytic Converters

    Less than 1% of the world's rare earths are recycled — and a Cornell spinout thinks engineered bacteria can change that. In this episode, Dustin Olsen talks with Alexa Schmitz, CEO and co-founder of REEgen, about using bioleaching to recover rare earth elements from catalytic-converter slag, the waste left behind after recyclers harvest platinum and palladium. Alexa explains how REEgen's biological leaching solution pulls up to 98% of the rare earths out of slag that's 3–3.5% rare earth by weight, why biomining already produces about 20% of the world's copper, and the tradeoff between maximum recovery and real-world economics. She also shares what it was like to be one of 12 founders invited to the White House after China restricted heavy rare earth exports — and why she believes a secure supply chain has to be international, not purely domestic. A microbiologist-turned-founder on turning industrial waste into a domestic rare earth supply.

  7. Jul 23

    S2 E78: China Embargoes Gallium. This Montana Mine Has 6x More. — Harvey Kaye, US Critical Materials

    When China restricts gallium exports, U.S. defense contractors can't rebuild the radar systems protecting thousands of miles of airspace. Harvey Kaye, Executive Chairman of US Critical Materials Corporation, explains why Sheep Creek in Montana changes that calculus. Independently validated as North America's richest rare earth deposit — 9% total rare earth elements, gallium at 300 ppm versus the 50 ppm the U.S. was importing from China — Sheep Creek is the company's crown jewel. But the bigger story is what US Critical Materials is building around it: a full chain from mine through processing through offtake, without sending a gram to China. Kaye explains the "rock to dock" strategy: a CRADA with Idaho National Labs, an electrochemical membrane reactor, and a full-scale processing plant going up on a U.S. Army base. He also covers the ore-agnostic integration play, AI-driven ore-to-process matching, and the timeline: 1,500 tons in 2026, commercial quantities in 2027, and an IPO targeted for fall 2026.

  8. Jul 16

    S2 E77: By 2027, Every Defense Magnet Must Prove It Didn't Come from China — Nobody Is Ready | Jacob Clayton, Sagint

    By January 1, 2027, every magnet, tantalum, and tungsten component in a U.S. defense system must be traced back to its mine — with proof it never touched China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. According to our guest, right now 0% of supply chains can meet that standard. Jacob Clayton is the CEO and co-founder of Sagint and a former Marine Corps reserve lieutenant colonel with 18 years of service, including security compliance programs across 22 U.S. embassies and consulates. In this episode, he explains how Sagint uses blockchain tokenization and zero knowledge proofs to replace paper-based compliance documents — which are easy to forge — with tamper-proof, real-time records that make critical mineral supply chains traceable, bankable, and insurable. We cover the DFAR 252.225-7052 deadline, the new NDAA mineral traceability provision, the ReElement partnership, and what "you can't fake physics" means for supply chain integrity. New episodes every Thursday.

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About

We're taking you to the heart of one of the most critical and underappreciated battles shaping our modern world: the rare earth element supply chain. Discover the high-stakes dynamics that are fueling international competition, from China’s commanding grip on processing, refining, and value-added production of rare earth elements to the industries and innovations that depend on these indispensable resources. Each week, we expose the geoscience, geopolitics, and economic forces behind the West's growing reliance on China—forces that are hidden in plain sight but impossible to ignore.

Information

  • Creator
    Dustin Olsen
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    84
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dustin Olsen
  • Show Website
    Rare Earth Exchanges

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