Hitachi plans to cut its dependence on China for rare earth metals, thanks to the development of machinery to harvest these valuable materials from scrap disk drives and compressors. China produces well over 90% of the world supply of rare earth metals, which are hugely important to high-performance optics and lasers as well as to powerful magnets and superconductors.
According to a Bloomberg report, Hitachi has designed a machine that can remove rare earth magnets from hard disk drives at a rate of 100 per hour, eight times faster than can be performed manually.
Concerns about Chinese dominance of crucial rare earth metals were heightened in August 2010 whenChina restricted export quotas of the metals with no official explanation, sparking discussion on how to reduce dependence on Chinese supply.
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