Highlights
- China Northern Rare Earth is pioneering digital and intelligent transformation in the rare earth industry.
- Focus on automation and smart manufacturing across production lines.
- Invested nearly 300 million yuan in digital construction.
- Achieved significant automation in key processes.
- Became a demonstration benchmark for digital transformation.
- Engaged in strategic technological innovation and collaboration with universities and research institutes.
- Developing smart workshops.
- Laying groundwork for future ‘digital twin’ factories.
At a critical moment when the country is vigorously promoting digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading to promote high-quality development of enterprises by cultivating and developing new quality productivity, state-owned enterprises need to shoulder their responsibilities and continuously improve the development quality and resilience of the entire industry. China Northern Rare Earth (opens in a new tab) reports via press release that the company will bear the primary responsibility of being the main force in the construction of the “two rare earth bases”, actively promote the deep integration of digitalization and enterprise management, and lead the industry’s “high-end, intelligent, and green” transformation and upgrading at full speed.
Why is this important? Before delving into what the “two rare earth bases” in China is all about Rare Earth Exchanges reminds all that this complex that is the Chinese rare earth mineral complex controls about 90% of rare earth elements production. What happens with behemoths like China Northern Rare Earth matters to the rest of the world.
What is the “two rare earth bases” initiative in China?
When referring to “two rare earth bases” in China, it primarily means the development of two major centers within the country focused on the mining, processing, and production of rare earth elements, with the most prominent location being Baotou, Inner Mongolia, which houses the largest rare earth deposit in the world, the Bayan Obo mine, making it the primary “rare earth base” in China; the second “base” is often considered to be a secondary region with significant rare earth reserves and processing capabilities, contributing to China’s overall dominance in the rare earth market.
Key points about the “two rare earth bases”:
Baotou, Inner Mongolia:
Considered the central hub for China’s rare earth industry, with a complete industrial chain including mining, smelting, separation, and production of rare earth new materials.
Bayan Obo Mine:
Located in Baotou, this is the world’s largest known rare earth deposit, giving China a significant advantage in rare earth production.
Focus on development:
The “two rare earth bases” concept indicates a strategy to further develop and enhance the capacity of both primary and secondary rare earth production centers within China.
China Northern Rare Earth Streamlining and Automating
He Jianrong, an employee of the second workshop of the smelting branch (Huamei Company), has worked for 16 years. He never thought that his job would become what it is now. “Three years ago, from pouring, discharging to stacking, every step on the production line required manual labor, but now it is all automated, which not only reduces the labor intensity of employees, but also makes the production site environment look brand new.”
The burning section where He Jianrong works is an important part of the production of rare earth oxides. He still remembers the scene when the supplier came to the workshop to conduct research when the digital transformation was first carried out in 2021. “The transformation started from the auxiliary line, and it was improved little by little and transitioned to the main line.” And such an arrangement is the result of the company’s careful consideration.
Telling the Transformation Story
In the initial stage of digital transformation of China’s northern rare earth industry, there was no mature experience and no matching automation equipment available. Everything had to start from scratch, from application systems to equipment automation. Many peers and experts also believe that due to the particularity of its equipment and production lines, the rare earth industry has very limited mature solutions for digital construction compared to other advanced and mature industries such as steel, petrochemicals, and building materials.
In fact, high temperature and high corrosion characteristics of the production process not to mention the various online detection equipment and adjustment devices suitable for intelligent control necessitated extensive customization.
The difficulty of promoting the universalization, standardization, and scale of intelligent manufacturing is much greater than that of other mature industries the company shares in its media outlet.
The Start—Information & Information Technology Group
In 2021, China Northern Rare Earth established an information and intelligent technology group to plan and build a platform, five main lines, two major supports, and a set of standard construction goals.
According to the three stages of “digitalization, networking, and intelligence” and the four levels of “intelligent equipment, intelligent workshops, intelligent factories, and intelligent interconnection”, the overall plan will be implemented in steps to promote digital and intelligent transformation and upgrading, and project construction will be the active wheel to drive all wheels to turn together. So far, China Northern Rare Earth has invested nearly 300 million yuan in automation and digital construction.
Three Years Later: Substantial Advancement
After three years of continuous exploration and practice, intelligent equipment such as centralized control systems, production, and manufacturing execution systems, AGV carts, industrial robots, intelligent inspections, unmanned warehousing, and automatic weighing have been widely used in various production lines of the smelting branch (Huamei Company). In 2024, the smelting branch (Huamei Company) passed the third level (integration level) review of the maturity assessment of intelligent manufacturing capabilities and is the first company in the country to receive this honor in the production process of rare earth carbonates and rare earth oxides.
In the field of rare earth raw material production, China Northern Rare Earth is undoubtedly unique in that it has introduced digital technology throughout the entire process and achieved production automation control in all key processes. What is even more rare is that in the face of many challenges in technological innovation and industrial upgrading, China Northern Rare Earth has promoted its hard-won excellent cases and implementation experience to many subsidiaries, promoting resource sharing and technical collaboration within China Northern Rare Earth.
On November 6, the reporter saw in the unmanned packaging production line of the Hefa rare earth carbon precipitation workshop that the production line, through independent design and equipment modification, can also realize the full process automation and unmanned production of “wet material” products such as praseodymium and neodymium carbonate from loading-discharging-transportation, making product quality more stable, production efficiency improved, and production environment improved. In 2024, many companies under China Northern Rare Earth will promote intelligent transformation projects, and projects such as the automatic batching production line of Northern Rare Earth Magnetic Materials Company, the automation transformation of Gansu rare earth tail gas enrichment system, and the automatic analysis and inspection line of Huaxing rare earth rapid tester will be completed one after another. The CNC rate of key processes, the digitalization rate of production equipment, and the automation rate of 3D positions have increased by 1.13%, 4.08%, and 28.4% year-on-year, respectively. China Northern Rare Earth was awarded the title of Demonstration Benchmark Enterprise for Digital Transformation in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and received a government reward of 1 million yuan.
An Ecosystem of Innovation
China Northern Rare Earth is not only a leader in technological innovation, but also an initiator and leader of collaborative innovation. More and more well-known universities, research institutes and digital industry companies are joining the field of digitization of rare earth production lines, utilizing the rich production scenarios provided by China Northern Rare Earth’s complete industrial chain of “rare earth smelting-functional materials-terminal applications”, actively exploring key core technology breakthroughs, and providing strong support for the rare earth industry to accelerate digital transformation and upgrading.
The increasingly favorable external development environment has also allowed China’s northern rare earth to take advantage of the development of science and technology. In the China Northern Rare Earth Green Smelting Upgrading and Reconstruction Project, which has just been put into production, the rare earth industry used the new technology of “digital delivery” for the first time. Different from the traditional paper document delivery, “digital delivery” is to integrate the data, documents, and models of the design, procurement, construction and other stages of the design institute, equipment manufacturer, and delivery platform after delivering them in a standard format and visualize them with a three-dimensional model as the carrier. After the project is put into operation, these important data will continue to serve the operation, maintenance, renovation, and expansion of the factory, forming big data indexed by bit numbers and three-dimensional models, and combined with DCS, MES, ERP and other systems to lay the foundation for the factory’s “digital twin” and ultimately realize the “factory of the future.”
Li Junyi, deputy director of the Equipment Engineering Department of China Northern Rare Earth hints at a work in progress declaring “The rare earth industry still has a long way to go to achieve digitalization. China Northern Rare Earth will focus on integrating data applications and building smart workshops to continuously promote digital transformation.”
What’s Next?
In the next step, China Northern Rare Earth will steadily promote the in-depth application of data in the group’s management and control business systems, practice the feasibility of data aggregation and sharing, and guide data application; promote the construction of production and manufacturing execution systems for Gansu Rare Earth (opens in a new tab), Hefa Rare Earth (opens in a new tab), and Northern Rare Earth Magnetic Materials Company (opens in a new tab), promote the construction of smart factories for green smelting upgrading and transformation projects, and promote the construction of smart workshops for extraction and carbon deposition processes. Through the homology, sharing, and visualization of edge layer data and information, the company’s digital industry attractiveness and leadership will be enhanced.
Onward and Upward
As the end of the year approaches, the pace of digital upgrading of China’s northern rare earths has not slowed down. One project after another under construction is subtly influencing the future production structure of the rare earth industry, achieving a leap from “new” to “quality” in productivity, accelerating the development of the rare earth industry, and injecting intelligent power into becoming the main force in the construction of the “two rare earth bases”.
Daniel
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