(Reuters) -Mining major Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) said on Wednesday it had extracted its first primary gallium as part of a collaboration with U.S.-based Indium Corp that aims to eventually produce commercial quantities of the critical, rare-earth metal.
The development comes amid restrictions from China on exports of metals such as gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States as part of Beijing’s retaliation to Washington’s trade war.
Rio Tinto said the first extraction was performed at Indium’s R&D facility in New York, with the next phase looking to assess techniques that can enable production of higher quantities of gallium at a pilot-scale.
If the miner succeeds in taking production to commercial scale at its refinery in Quebec, Canada, Rio Tinto is predicting output of up to 40 tonnes annually, worth about 5%-10% of the current global production.
"Rio Tinto and Indium Corporation strive to strengthen the North American supply chain for gallium," Rio Tinto executive Jérôme Pécresse said in a statement.
China is the world’s largest producer of antimony, germanium and gallium, which have niche but vital roles in clean energy, chipmaking and defence, but Beijing’s target on U.S. supply chains is driving up prices of some metals.