Australia freezes Chinese investor rights over key rare earth project

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has frozen the shareholder rights of a group Chinese-linked investors he believes are seeking to illegally gain control over an undeveloped but strategically important Australian rare earth mining project.

The Albanese government has become increasingly worried by Chinese efforts to build up shareholdings in companies sitting on Australian critical mineral tenements, including the rare earth metals needed to make an array of products such as electric motors, wind turbines and missiles and other military hardware.

On Tuesday, West Australian rare earth miner Northern Minerals said Chalmers had issued orders preventing three investors on its share register from voting or exercising any other rights at future meetings, including the company’s postponed annual general meeting.

Northern Minerals said the government had reason to believe that the three investors – Hong Kong Ying Tank Limited, Real International Resources Limited, and Qogir Trading & Service Co. Limited – were among six shareholders that had been ordered to divest their stakes in Northern Minerals in May, but had not co-operated.

A spokesperson for Chalmers said the government expected companies investing in Australia to comply with Australian laws.

“We’ll do what’s necessary to protect the national interest and the integrity of our foreign investment framework,” the spokesperson said.

Northern Minerals’ Browns Range project in WA’s East Kimberley region sits on Australia’s best-known orebodies of dysprosium and terbium, two heavy rare earth elements needed in powerful heat-resistant magnets.

The project, which is in its early stages, is seen as strategically important because it could become the first significant non-Chinese source of dysprosium, and it would be able to supply heavy rare earths to Australia’s first fully integrated rare earths refinery being built by Iluka Resources at Eneabba in WA.

China’s mines and refineries currently produce most of the world’s rare earth metals, making them essential suppliers to foreign manufacturers of products as diverse as computers, smartphones, camera lenses, LED lights, electric vehicles, fighter jets and precision-guided weapons. China accounts for about 70 per cent of rare earth mining, and 90 per cent of the market for separation and processing.

But Australia and its allies, including the US, are racing to lessen their dependence on China, worried about Beijing’s willingness to use its market-dominant position as leverage in geopolitical and economic disputes.

Northern Minerals executive chairman Adam Handley welcomed Chalmers’ orders on Tuesday.

“A review of Northern Minerals’ share register following 2 July 2026 showed that a majority of the shares the subject of the May disposal orders remained registered in the names of the persons the subject of those orders, and the Company referred those matters to the Foreign Investment Review Board,” Handley said.

Shares in the ASX-listed rare earth miner rose more than 7 per cent following the intervention.

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