Australia orders China-linked shareholders to divest stakes in Northern Minerals

# Australia orders China-linked shareholders to divest stakes in Northern Minerals

Australia has ordered several China-linked shareholders to sell their stakes in Northern Minerals, the rare-earths company at the centre of a long-running foreign investment dispute.

According to AFP via HKFP, Treasurer Jim Chalmers directed six shareholders to exit the company under foreign investment laws. Three of the shareholders are listed in China, two in Hong Kong and one in the British Virgin Islands. The move follows Canberra’s earlier use of the same powers in 2024 to force another batch of Chinese investors to sell.

The government says the intervention is about protecting the national interest and shielding the critical minerals sector from outside influence. Northern Minerals is important because it controls the Browns Range dysprosium deposit in Western Australia, and dysprosium is used in high-performance magnets for electric vehicles.

The company has tried to position itself as a non-Chinese source of a mineral that is heavily concentrated in China. AFP notes that almost 99 percent of the world’s dysprosium is currently produced in China, according to Northern Minerals. That supply concentration gives the company strategic value well beyond its market capitalisation.

The shareholders named in the report include Beijing-based Vastness Investment Group, which held more than six percent and had attempted to replace the company chair earlier this year before withdrawing the bid. Hong Kong-based Qogir Trading and Service Company also held nearly five percent. Those stakes made the ownership dispute more than a routine governance matter.

Northern Minerals referred itself to Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board in November 2025, signalling that the government was already watching closely. The latest divestment order shows that Canberra has decided the shareholder structure remains a concern.

The move also fits a wider geopolitical pattern. Australia and the United States have both pushed to diversify critical supply chains for rare earths, and the packet notes that a U.S.-Australia deal last October singled out companies like Northern Minerals for that reason. That means the shareholder dispute is tied to industrial policy as much as it is to corporate control.

Trading in Northern Minerals was halted on the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday morning, and the company said it was considering the new disposal orders. What happens next will determine whether the firm can stabilise its ownership while keeping its strategic role in the critical minerals sector.

The story is not just about one company. It is about how governments are now treating rare earths as assets with national-security weight, and about the lengths Canberra is willing to go to keep a potentially strategic mine out of foreign hands.