For almost 80 years rare earth metals have been pumped out of this industrial plant in La Rochelle on France's west coast.

But as the materials become more and more crucial to the global economy, chemicals firm Solvay is expanding its processing plant next to the glistening Atlantic Ocean to meet surging demand across Europe.

This group of 17 metals are essential to huge amounts of modern technology such as smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines and MRI scanners.

However, around 70% of rare earths mining, and 90% of refining, happens in China, as a result of years of support from the Chinese government.

Europe, like many other parts of the world, is trying to reduce its dependence on importing these key metals from China. The future of Solvay's plant will be critical to those ambitions.

"This is a market that is growing fast, and, also, there is a greater demand for shorter supply chains," says Solvay's CEO Philippe Kehren.

The Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made companies and politicians try to remove some of the vulnerabilities in their supply chains.

"When you have a material that is coming almost 100% from one specific location, if you are dependent on this, you want to diversify your sourcing. This is what we can offer," explains the boss of the Belgian chemicals giant.

That is why the EU's Critical Raw Materials Act came into force last year. It sets targets for reducing dependence on imports for the extraction, processing and recycling of the most important substances by 2030.

Europe only has two rare earth processing facilities, one in Estonia and this one in western France. It is the only plant outside of China that can process all 17 different rare earths.

The increased investment in the facility comes as it is moving away from focusing on supplying rare earths for catalytic convertors, to instead focus on soaring demand for the

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