China, the world's foremost supplier of rare earth minerals, will be introducing in November specialised invoices for designated rare earth producers to curb the rampant illegal production of the rare earth elements in the country.

This as Australian and American miners ramp up their respective production of rare earth minerals to diversify supply from China which have been monopolising the production and sell-off of rare earth minerals, hiking costs by as much as 1,500 per cent on average in the last year alone.

Analysts see China's plan of issuing specialised invoices will cause panic selling on the domestic market by small companies and might lead to a short-term plunge in the prices of rare earth minerals.

"We expect that the value of the invoices will be closely connected with each company's production and export quotas, which will leave most of the small producers and traders and let a few big exploration and separation companies stand out as qualified," Liu Minda, an analyst of Huatai Securities Co Ltd., told China Daily News.

Analysts further said the invoices confirm China's efforts to control the production and sell-off of the valuable rare earth minerals in the world market. Two years ago, China started slashing export quotas as it closed some of its rare earth processors due to environmental concerns.

China, the world's second-largest economy is likewise the world's biggest supplier of rare earth minerals, holding more than 30 per cent of total world reserves. Nearly all the world's processing facilities are found in China.

For this year, China set a production ceiling of 93,000 tonnes. Its biggest rare earth minerals producer, Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth (Group) Hi-Tech Co. was given a production quota of 50,000 tonnes for 2011, while 5,000 tonnes was assigned to rival China Minmetals Corp.

Prices of rare earths have increased by as much as fourfold between January and July as China tightened measures to control production and export quotas for the sector. Rare earth minerals, comprised of 17 elements, are widely used in manufacturing of batteries of hybrid vehicles, computers, digital cameras, televisions, smartphones, in long-lasting light bulbs and serving as critical magnets in guided missiles.

However, prices plunged after the earlier surge eroded downstream players' profits and led to overstocking. Figures from the Shanghai Metals Market showed a decline of about 30 per cent in the past three months, with others dropping more than 50 per cent.

"Starting in the 1980s, China was able to start taking over the rare-earth market, which it was able to do because its mining industry is at a primitive, low-cost model," Keith Long, a mineral economist and geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in PCWorld.

Prices are seen to further depress in the coming months with the institution of the specialised invoices. Small companies that are ineligible to obtain the specialised invoices for whatever reason will be forced to sell their inventories to cash in their supply, ultimately flooding the market, analysts said.

With the presence of the specialised invoices, illegal miners will slowly be forced to exit the market, leaving the rare earth minerals industry dominated by a few companies. This move will result in the long-run to a better-regulated industry, analysts added.

Meanwhile, Australia and the U.S. have stepped into the rare earth elements sector as both gear to locate and extract rare-earth elements.

Australian rare earth metals miner Lynas remained confident it will be able to supply rare earth minerals to customers by the first half of next year, even as delays stalled its Malaysian refinery. Lynas said processing of the rare earth ore at its plant would begin in early 2012, a delay of a month or two, due to procurement and construction difficulties.

U.S. miner Molycorp has reopened after closing in 2002 following radioactive wastewater spills and price competition.

"We've realized we need to better understand what potential sources of rare earths there are in the U.S., and in the world, that are not controlled by China, and that hadn't been considered before," U.S. Geological Survey researcher Thomas Frost said.

Molycorp's facility in Mountain Pass, California is being rebuilt to produce up to 40,000 metric tonnes of rare earth elements by 2013, a 700 per cent increase from its production target for the end of this year. Molycorp mines 10 of the 17 rare earth minerals on the periodic table of elements.

Geologists, however, expect demand for rare-earth minerals will exceed the available world supply until at least 2015.

"It is essential that a stable non-Chinese source of REO [rare-earth oxides] be established so that the U.S. RE supply chain is no longer solely dependent on China's RE exports," a U.S. Department of Defense report released in October said. It noted the U.S. is too dependent on Chinese rare-earth minerals.