Turkish energy minister vows to boost rare earth material cooperation

Türkiye’s energy and natural resources minister vowed Tuesday to boost cooperation for the excavation and processing of rare earth materials.

During an address to the third ministerial round table meeting, as part of the Future Minerals Forum in Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, Alparslan Bayraktar said the country is open to new partnerships for the development of this crucial sector with countries, particularly in Africa and West and Central Asia.

Featuring over 200 speakers from the global mining industry, the Future Minerals Forum will run until Thursday.

Türkiye has already made headway in this sector with the establishment of a Rare Earth Elements Research Institute in 2020 to examine the potential of critical minerals.

A discovery in 2022 of the world's second-largest rare earth element reserve in the central province of Eskisehir accelerated this sector’s development, with the country now ready to build an industrial facility in the central province of Eskisehir to process 570,000 tonnes of rare earth elements on an annual basis.

It is now looking at knowledge sharing with experts in the field of rare earth elements, also known as 'industrial gold.'

Rare earth elements consist of a group of 17 chemical elements and are indispensable elements for new technologies like batteries for electric vehicles (EVs).

China supplies over 61% of the world's rare earth elements and holds roughly two-thirds of scarce metals and minerals globally, according to Statista, a German online data gathering and visualization platform.