UNCOMMON ATTRACTION. The powerful neodymium-iron-boron magnets are made of expensive rare earths | Photo Credit: xiao zhou

Can India achieve magnet independence? The honest answer is, no — at least, not anytime soon. However, it can reduce its dependence on other countries, especially China, for its magnet requirement.

A few steps have been taken in the recent past. In November 2025, the government approved a ₹7,280 crore scheme to promote the manufacture of sintered rare earth permanent magnets in India. The scheme is ambitious — it seeks to create in the country an annual manufacturing capacity for 10,000 tonnes of magnets.

Today, India consumes about 6,000 tonnes, almost all of it met by imports. Consumption is expected to double by 2030.

The public-funded Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) recently stated that is has developed technology for producing rare earth alloy powders “directly from inexpensive oxides, at much lower temperatures”, thereby slashing costs.

Meanwhile, technology for converting RE alloys into magnets “is available with the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory, Hyderabad”, according to a government press release.

Now, there’s a suggestion from Dr Raghavan Gopalan, veritably the “magnet man of India”, who recently retired as Director of the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), a government research laboratory based in Hyderabad.

Gopalan had earlier told businessline that India could reduce its import dependence for magnets by using one rare earth mineral abundantly available within its shores — cerium. Most high-performance permanent magnets today are made from neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB), often using a mix of neodymium and praseodymium — all of which are relatively scarce and expensive rare earths.

Cerium-based magnets are essentially a modified version, where a part of the neodymium-praseodymium content is replaced with cerium — the most abundant and cheapest rare earth element. The resulting magnet is significantly cheaper, but somewhat lower in performance. India has about 2.5 million tonnes of cerium in the monazite sands found abundantly in its southern peninsular coast.

Gopalan said cerium magnets “sit between” bonded and sintered magnets. They do not match the strength of the top-end sintered NdFeB magnets used in electric vehicles or wind turbines, but can compete with or outperform lower-end bonded magnets in many applications. This makes them suitable for mass-market uses such as two-wheelers, appliances, pumps and industrial motors.

Alloy optimisation

The challenge is technical. Cerium tends to weaken magnetic properties. Research efforts, including in India, are focused on optimising alloy composition and microstructure to minimise performance loss while retaining the cost advantage.

For India, the attraction is strategic. Cerium makes up a large share of the country’s rare earth resources but has limited high-value uses. Developing cerium-based magnets could allow India to build a domestic magnet industry at scale — reducing import dependence while putting an underutilised resource to work.

Gopalan said cerium magnets could work well in applications that do not see high temperatures, such as small motors in electric vehicles. This “middle-ground” positioning is important because much of India’s magnet demand does not require top-end performance. In electric two-wheelers, for instance, motors typically operate at lower power densities and temperatures than in passenger cars, making them more tolerant to modest reductions in magnetic strength.

Similarly, appliances such as air-conditioners, washing machines and refrigerators, and industrial equipment like pumps, fans and compressors prioritise cost, reliability and scale over peak efficiency.

Cerium-based magnets could offer a viable substitute for both imported NdFeB magnets and lower-performance bonded magnets. Slightly larger magnets or minor motor redesigns can often compensate for lower magnetic strength without affecting end-use performance.

Gopalan is now in Japan as part of the Indo-Japan LOTUS initiative, which supports graduate students and post-doctoral researchers in India to travel to Japan for research projects under Japanese experts. He intends to initiate a ‘rare earth magnet collaboration’ between the two countries.

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Published on May 4, 2026