Published June 24, 2026
China's Rare Earth Price Index reached 261.9 on June 23, 2026, according to the China Rare Earth Industry Association — meaning rare earth prices now sit roughly 2.6 times above the index baseline set in 2010. Heavy rare earths, including terbium and dysprosium, are leading the climb, while lighter elements like cerium and lanthanum have stayed comparatively stable. The trend has been building since mid-2025 and accelerated sharply following a series of export-control measures.
It's worth being precise about which rare earths this actually affects, because the category gets talked about as one monolithic market and it isn't. The materials seeing the steepest price gains and the tightest export licensing are heavy rare earths used in high-performance magnets — the kind that go into EV motors, defense systems, and wind turbines. Industry analysts at S&P Global expect those premiums to persist through 2026 and beyond, particularly while non-Chinese processing capacity remains limited.
RETHING® XRE-01 is a rare earth ceramic composite, not a magnet material. It doesn't compete for the same heavy rare earth feedstock — terbium, dysprosium — that's driving the bulk of this price action and the dual-use export licensing scrutiny. That's a meaningfully different exposure than what's described in most of the coverage of this story, which is almost entirely framed around magnets, EVs, and defense applications.
That said, "different exposure" doesn't mean "no exposure." China remains the source for essentially all rare earth processing capacity globally, and broader industry consolidation, environmental inspections, and export licensing requirements affect the cost and predictability of sourcing rare earth inputs generally — even for compounds well outside the magnet-grade category. We're not going to pretend a rising price index somewhere in the system has zero relevance to our supply chain just because the specific elements in question aren't the ones we use.
What we can say plainly: we're watching this the way we'd watch any upstream input cost, and we'll flag it here if it ever becomes material to how we source or price RE3™ technology. For now, the more useful takeaway for anyone following the rare earth story generally is that the "rare earth market" headlines you see aren't one market — they're several, with very different supply dynamics, and it's worth checking which specific elements a given headline is actually about before assuming it applies broadly.