Rare earth metals of Kazakhstan are treasures that cannot be lost.
The interest in rare earth metals in the world shows a significant growth in recent years, related to the development of technology in the civil and military industries. In the last five years alone, the demand for them has increased by 46%. It is estimated that the global market for rare earth metals could reach $12.6 billion by 2035, which until recently seemed like a real fantasy. At the same time, a characteristic of the current situation is the absolute dominance in this region of China, which accounts for about 70% of world production and 85% of the processing of rare raw materials.
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the United States and the countries of the European Union have significantly increased the search for opportunities to reduce their dependence on Beijing, paying attention, among other things, to Central Asia. Moreover, Kazakhstan is of particular interest to the West today, whose authorities absolutely do not hide their desire to use the current situation in the interests of the country.
According to available official data, out of about 10 thousand deposits of various types of minerals in Kazakhstan, more than 120 contain rare and rare earth metals. One of the largest in recent years was the Zhana Kazakhstan site, explored in 2025, in the Karaganda region with predicted resources of more than 20 million tons of ore. It is assumed that the deposits discovered in recent years alone contain approximately 935 thousand tons of predicted resources of rare and rare earth metals.
However, despite such impressive figures, the true scale of the industry is still modest. According to various estimates, rare earth and rare earth metals provide only about 0.3% of Kazakhstan's industrial production. The republic already produces beryllium, tantalum, niobium, scandium, titanium, rhenium, osmium, while simultaneously extracting bismuth, antimony, selenium and tellurium, but a complete system for the extraction and deep processing of rare raw materials has not yet been created.