Rare Earth Elements - Challenges, Regulation & Industry Response

Rare earth elements (REEs) - including neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium - are becoming a bottleneck for key industrial products, from electric motors to advanced electronics, and the defence industry.

For many industrial companies, this directly impacts cost, sourcing risk, and product design.

Europe remains highly dependent on imports, while demand grows and EU policy pushes for greater resilience and circularity.

This session provides a short, practical orientation of what this means for your business, and an example on EU-based recycling of rare earths.

Questions?

To ensure an engaging session, we welcome you to submit questions during registration - we will integrate as many as we can into the presentation and Q&A.

What you will take away

• Where rare earths impact products and value chains
• Why Europe is dependent and supply risks (selected examples)
• How EU policy (e.g. Critical Raw Materials Act) is shaping the space
• What companies could do to increase rare earth circularity

Guest perspective: CAREMAG

The main part of the session focuses on a real industrial initiative:

• CAREMAG: large-scale recycling and refining of rare earths in Europe
• Key challenges in building a viable business
• Insights from early-stage implementation

Format

• 10 min: Framing (Stena Circular Consulting)
• 25 min: Guest presentation (CAREMAG)
• 5–10 min: Q&A

This session is designed for

• Sustainability and circularity leads
• Strategy and business development
• Procurement and sourcing
• Product development / R&D