Top 20 Countries by Rare Earth Mine Production, 2025
Rare Earth Mine Production in 2025: Where Output Is Concentrated (t REO)
Rare earth mine production is typically reported in metric tons of rare-earth-oxide equivalent (t REO), a standardized unit that converts mixed rare-earth mineral output into an oxide basis for comparability. For a “2025 snapshot,” this page uses the latest full-year global estimates published in the 2025 edition of the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries (covering 2024e).
The ranking matters because mined REE feedstocks are the first gate in a supply chain that ends in high-value components such as permanent magnets (motors, wind turbines, robotics), catalysts, optics, and specialized alloys. However, the strategic bottleneck is often not mining volume itself, but the ability to separate and refine concentrates into high-purity oxides and metals at scale.
| Rank | Country | Value (t REO) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 270,000 est. |
| 2 | United States | 45,000 est. |
| 3 | Myanmar (Burma) | 31,000 est. |
| 4 | Nigeria | 13,000 est. |
| 5 | Thailand | 13,000 est. |
| 6 | Australia | 13,000 est. |
| 7 | India | 2,900 est. |
| 8 | Russia | 2,500 est. |
| 9 | Madagascar | 2,000 est. |
| 10 | Vietnam | 300 est. |
What the 2025 Ranking Signals: Producer Tiers and a “Long Tail”
The distribution is not simply “top vs. the rest.” It is closer to a steep staircase: a single dominant producer at the top, a small second tier that still operates at industrial scale, and then a thin long tail where output is meaningful locally but small in global totals. In REE, this matters because separation, solvent extraction, and magnet-grade metalmaking require consistent feedstock streams and tight impurity control.
The first tier is anchored by very large-scale integrated capacity and supply chain depth (mine output plus processing capability). The second tier includes countries that can supply concentrates but may still route intermediates into third-country refining networks. The long tail is visible in the producer list, yet its strategic importance can be larger than its tonnage if it contains higher proportions of heavy rare earths (HREE) used for heat-resistant magnets (notably dysprosium and terbium).
A key analytical caveat is that mine production in t REO is a mass metric, not a quality metric. Two producers can report similar t REO totals while contributing very different mixes (light vs. heavy rare earths), different concentrate grades, and different downstream “convertibility” into separated oxides and metals. That is one reason why policy and industry assessments often treat separation/refining as the practical bottleneck, even when mining expands.
| Rank | Country | Mine production (t REO) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 270,000 |
| 2 | United States | 45,000 |
| 3 | Myanmar (Burma) | 31,000 |
| 4 | Nigeria | 13,000 |
| 5 | Thailand | 13,000 |
| 6 | Australia | 13,000 |
| 7 | India | 2,900 |
| 8 | Russia | 2,500 |
| 9 | Madagascar | 2,000 |
| 10 | Other (combined) | 1,100 (residual) |
| 11 | Vietnam | 300 |
| 12 | Malaysia | 130 |
| 13 | Brazil | 20 |
How to Interpret the REE Ranking for Industry and Policy
A highly concentrated mining ranking is not automatically a “supply crisis,” but it does imply that global availability can hinge on a small number of jurisdictions, permitting regimes, and logistics routes. When mine output is dominated by a few producers, short-term disruptions—regulatory changes, export controls, processing outages, or transport constraints—can propagate quickly through magnet, electronics, and automotive supply chains, even if total global resources are ample.
For rare earths, the second-order issue is that not all mined material becomes economically separable into the specific oxides demanded by industry. Permanent magnets depend heavily on neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr), and high-temperature performance often requires dysprosium and terbium. If mining growth is concentrated in deposits and flows that favor light rare earths, policy discussions can remain centered on processing capacity, separation know-how, and material specification, rather than tonnage alone.
The concentration metrics below summarize what the ranking “looks like” as a market structure: Top-3 and Top-5 shares provide an intuitive view of dominance, while the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) compresses the distribution into a single score. For a commodity that feeds critical downstream technologies, a high HHI highlights the practical value of redundancy—multiple qualified suppliers, multiple process routes, and multiple logistics options—across the mine-to-magnet chain.
- REE mine output is structurally concentrated, so redundancy is a resilience feature rather than an efficiency “extra.”
- Mining volume (t REO) is a mass metric; magnet relevance depends on the NdPr/HREE mix and conversion pathways into separated oxides.
- Separation and refining capacity can be the binding constraint even when mine production expands.
- Supplier diversification can be geographic (more producers) and technical (more qualified process routes and specs).
- Long-tail producers can matter disproportionally if they contribute scarce heavy rare earths or de-risk logistics.
| Metric | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Top-3 share (China + United States + Myanmar) | ≈ 87.8% | Share of total listed production estimates; rounded values can shift decimals. |
| Top-5 share (Top-3 + Nigeria + Thailand) | ≈ 94.4% | A small number of producers account for the vast majority of reported output. |
| Top-10 share (Top-10 countries by output) | ≈ 99.7% | Includes countries down to Vietnam in the latest benchmark year. |
| HHI (0–10,000 scale) | ≈ 4,924 | HHI = sum of squared shares × 10,000; includes an “Other (combined)” bucket as reported. |
| Rest-of-world share (reported residual) | ≈ 0.28% | Residual category reported as “Other (combined)” in the world production table. |
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Rare Earths (world mine production estimates in t REO; 2020–2024).
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025-rare-earths.pdfUSGS MCS 2025 master publication (context, definitions, and consistent reporting conventions across minerals).
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2025/mcs2025.pdfUSGS NMIC — Rare Earths statistics and information (background on supply, demand, and reporting).
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/rare-earths-statistics-and-informationUSGS data release for MCS 2025 Rare Earths (extracted world production dataset; metadata and update cadence).
https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/data/USGS%3A6798f088d34ea8c18376e7f9British Geological Survey — World Mineral Production 2019–2023 (historical perspective on rare earth oxide output).
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/539285/1/WMP_2019-2023_COMPLETE.pdfDownload dataset & charts (ZIP)
Tables (CSV/XLSX) and chart images (PNG) used in the REE mine production ranking.
Download ZIP
