When a European start-up developed a breakthrough technology capable of transforming low-grade bauxite – once considered waste – into high-quality feedstock for aluminium production, they announced it at an industry conference in Miami, United States.

The innovation not only promises to revive exhausted mines, but also opens a new door to extracting critical minerals and rare earth elements essential for semiconductors, electric vehicles and national defence.With Western governments from Washington to Brussels sounding the alarm over fragile supply chains and overdependence on China, one might have expected this European invention to debut first in Europe or the US.

Six years on, an industrial complex based on the technology is up and running in China, just 10 months after construction began.

While European and American officials held summits and issued policy statements calling for reshoring critical mineral production, China has moved quietly and at lightning speed.

In Liulin, a coal-mining county in Shanxi province, the foreign technology conceived in France and Switzerland was rapidly engineered, permitted, constructed and commissioned inside a functioning industrial complex – the result of unprecedented coordination between a provincial government eager for transformation and a local energy industry determined to take the global lead.

The project, a partnership between French-Swiss firm IB2 and Shanxi Senze Energy Technology Group, marks the world’s first large-scale deployment of this revolutionary silica-removal technology.