Neodymium magnet is now the most widely used type of permanent magnets. It's widely used in various applications for its super high performance. Its price is also significantly higher than other magnets and is kind of unstable during the past several years. American Applied Materials Corporation shared their experience and knowledge about this type of magnet to improve transparency of the magnet market.

Neodymium magnet is now the most widely used type of permanent magnets. It's widely used in wind power generation and hydrogen storage for its super high performance. Its price is also significantly higher than other magnets and is kind of unstable during the past several years. American Applied Materials Corporation shared their experience and knowledge about this type of magnet to improve transparency of the magnet market.

Neodymium Magnets Price trends of May 2015
The price of neodymium magnets has been rising during the past several weeks as the Chinese government is looking to control manufacturing and export of rare earth metals. And I would expect the price will still be fluctuating in the coming months.
Neodymium magnets prices are affected by the following factors:
1. Cost of Materials
Neodymium magnets are also called rare earth magnets, as they are actually alloy of rare earth metals, Iron and Boron. The Materials account for about 30% weight and 80% cost of neodymium magnets, because the prices of rare earth metals are pretty high and still increasing.
2. Labor Cost
Rising labor cost in manufacturing industry drives company to set their oversea manufacturing facilities. Another trend is that more and more manufacturing workforce will be replaced by robots. As regards to short term neodymium magnets price fluctuation, labor cost in manufacturing is not the most important factor.
3. Patent licensing fees
Japanese company Hitachi Metals holds most of the patents related to manufacturing of rare earth magnets while China manufactures about 90% of the world's neodymium magnets. So these Chinese companies need to pay Patent licensing fees to manufacture and sell these magnets. That would be added to each piece of magnets manufactured. A news published on July 28th 2014 on Bloomberg indicated that some of the most important patents have expired. So the price is expected to be sliding as the Chinese manufacturers are free to export these magnets without patent license.