Domestic

Profit for China's leading rare earth producer surges

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-04-07 09:36

BEIJING - The Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-earth (Group) High-tech Co, China's leading rare earth producer, said on Wednesday that its net profit reached a record high of 750.74 million yuan ($114.6 million) in 2010 due to rising rare earth prices.

This company's net profit was at 55.77 million yuan in 2009.

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The company attributed the profit surge to higher prices of rare earth products and the Chinese government's policies for promoting the development of the rare earth industry. The company said that its business revenue totaled 5.26 billion yuan last year, a year-on-year increase of 102.8 percent from 2009.

It also reported an earning per share of 0.93 yuan for the 2010 fiscal year.

Share prices of the company increased to the daily limit of ten percent to end at 97.26 yuan on Wednesday.

China, the world's largest rare earth producer, supplies more than 90 percent of the global demand. Its reserves, however, only account for about one-third of the world's total.

To protect the non-renewable resource and control environmental damage during the mining process, China announced a series of measures in the sector that include cuts in export quotas, crackdowns on illegal mining and mineral smuggling, a halt to new mining licenses and the introduction of production caps.