Govt Approves Lohum’s Rare Earth Magnet Plan; 29 More Electronics Projects Get Nod

The government has approved a proposal from Lohum Cleantech Pvt. Ltd. to manufacture rare earth permanent magnets from rare earth oxide, along with 29 other proposals for electronics component manufacturing, as part of efforts to build domestic capabilities in critical materials and components.

The approvals were granted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under the Electronics Components Manufacturing scheme and involve a projected investment of Rs 7,104 crore and expected production worth Rs 84,515 crore.

The ministry said the latest approvals are in continuation of the earlier clearance of 46 applications with a proposed investment of Rs 54,567 crore. With the current round of approvals, a total of 75 applications have been cleared under the scheme, with expected investment of Rs 61,671 crore and direct employment for 65,040 people.

The newly approved projects cover the manufacturing of 16 products that have applications across sectors such as mobile manufacturing, telecom, consumer electronics, strategic electronics, automotive and IT hardware.

These include sub-assemblies such as display modules, bare components like antennas, capacitors, connectors, heat sinks, lithium-ion cells, relays, resistors, transducers, surface-mount device passives, flexible printed circuit boards and inductors, as well as supply chain items including laminates, metallized films for capacitors and rare earth permanent magnets.

The approvals also include the country’s first surface-mount device passive plant for tantalum-based capacitors, the first flexible printed circuit board plant and the first rare earth permanent magnet facility.

The project awarded to Lohum Cleantech marks the first initiative to manufacture rare earth permanent magnets from rare earth oxide in India, seen as an important step towards developing indigenous capabilities in advanced materials.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Heavy Industries recently released the RFP for selection of beneficiaries to set up integrated Sintered NdFeB Rare Earth Permanent Magnet manufacturing facilities with a capacity of 6,000 MTPA under the Scheme to Promote Manufacturing of Sintered Rare Earth Permanent Magnet.

Under this scheme, the selected company will be allocated an annual production capacity ranging from 600 to 1,200 MTPA. The government will provide financial support through a capital subsidy of Rs 750 crore to help set up manufacturing facilities, along with sales-linked incentives totalling Rs 6,450 crore based on output. The three companies that emerge as the lowest bidders in the tender process will receive a limited assured supply of Neodymium-Praseodymium oxide from IREL (India) Ltd..