Australia’s plan to break China’s stranglehold on global supply of rare earths could get a boost with New York-listed miner Tronox considering investment in a Western Australian processing facility.

Tronox mines mineral sands like titanium and zircon in NSW and WA and has told Australian regulators that it wants to retrofit and expand its local portfolio to produce the sort of rare earth elements that are increasingly sought by governments in the US, Japan, Korea and Australia.