Reviewed September 2026 against USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Shanghai Metals Market, and ResearchAndMarkets’ Yttrium Market Report.

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Industrial-grade yttrium metal was trading at $34.82 per kilogram in Northeast Asia as of September 2026, per Shanghai Metals Market. Retail-purity metal (99.95%) sold for roughly $9,450/kg through specialty suppliers like Edgetech as of April 2026, and bulk yttrium oxide (Y₂O₃) benchmarked at $7-10/kg FOB China in March 2026. Those three numbers rarely appear next to each other, and the gap between them is the whole story: yttrium’s price depends entirely on which form you’re buying and in what quantity.

This page exists because the United States imports 100% of the yttrium it consumes — the U.S. Geological Survey recorded zero domestic mine production in 2025 — and 70% of those imports come from China. If you’re pricing yttrium, sourcing it for a lab or a supply chain, or just trying to understand what the element is actually for, the rest of this article works through current prices, the real industrial uses (not the marketing-brochure list), where it’s mined, and how exposed U.S. buyers are to a single-country supply chain.

Yttrium Metal Prices: What You’ll Actually Pay

“Yttrium metal prices” searches usually hit one of three very different markets, and conflating them is the most common mistake buyers make.

The retail price is roughly 270 times the industrial spot price for the same element, because retail listings sell gram-scale, high-purity samples (often for laboratory, collector, or element-sample use) at a completely different unit economics than a smelter buying tonnes of industrial-grade metal. If a number you find online doesn’t specify purity, form (metal vs. oxide), and quantity tier, treat it as unusable for any real purchasing decision.

Shanghai Metals Market refreshes its industrial quote daily during Asian trading hours — check the live SMM page for the current figure rather than relying on the September 2026 number above, which will have moved by the time you read this. There is no free, continuously updated retail-price index for small-lot yttrium metal; the $9,450/kg figure is a snapshot of one retailer’s listing in April 2026, and prices at that scale vary by supplier and available stock.

What Is Yttrium? Properties and Basic Facts

Yttrium (symbol Y, atomic number 39) is a silvery-white metal usually grouped with the rare earth elements for chemical and market purposes, though it’s technically a transition metal rather than a lanthanide. It has a melting point of 1526°C, strong resistance to corrosion in air and moisture, and forms high-performance alloys with aluminum, magnesium, and other metals.

• Symbol / atomic number: Y / 39
• Appearance: Silvery-white metallic luster
• Melting point: 1526°C
• Classification: Grouped commercially with rare earth elements; technically a transition metal
• Key traits: High-temperature stability, corrosion resistance, strong alloying ability

None of that is what makes yttrium “rare earth,” though — the name refers to how it’s mined and concentrated, not its position on the periodic table. It’s almost never found as a standalone ore worth mining on its own; it shows up as a minor constituent of rare-earth minerals and is separated out during processing.

Yttrium Uses: What It’s Actually For

The honest answer to “what is yttrium used for” is four industrial categories, and none of them are exotic: ceramics, electronics/phosphors, alloys, and lasers. USGS’s Mineral Commodity Summaries lists these as the standing end-use categories for yttrium; it does not publish a percentage or tonnage breakdown of how much goes to each, which is a real gap in the public data — if you need a market-share figure by application, no government source currently tracks it at that granularity, and you’d need a paid market report to get an estimate.

Yttrium-Stabilized Zirconia (YSZ) — Ceramics and Thermal Coatings

Adding yttrium oxide to zirconia stabilizes its crystal structure, producing YSZ — a ceramic used in thermal barrier coatings for turbine blades, in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), and in oxygen sensors. YSZ’s combination of heat resistance and ionic conductivity is why it shows up in power generation and industrial sensor equipment rather than consumer products.

Phosphors and Electronics

Yttrium compounds — yttrium oxide and yttrium vanadate in particular — are used as phosphors in displays, lasers (including YAG, yttrium-aluminum-garnet lasers used in industrial cutting and medical applications), and superconducting components. This is the application most people mean when they ask about yttrium in electronics.

Structural Alloys

Yttrium improves the strength and creep resistance of aluminum and magnesium alloys at high temperatures, which is why it appears in aerospace and specialty structural components where weight and heat tolerance both matter.

What Isn’t Established

Claims about yttrium as a crop micronutrient or fertilizer additive circulate in some agronomy literature, but it is not a recognized essential plant micronutrient, and there is no USDA, NASS, or equivalent regulatory dataset establishing commercial-scale agricultural use or a market size for it. Treat that application as experimental research territory, not an established use case, until a recognized agricultural authority publishes data on it.

Yttrium Mining and Production: Where It Comes From

There is no such thing as a dedicated “yttrium mine” in commercial operation — yttrium is a byproduct of rare-earth mineral processing, primarily from xenotime and from heavy rare-earth-bearing ion-adsorption clays, with additional recovery from monazite and bastnaesite ore streams where yttrium is present in smaller concentrations. At Mountain Pass, California — the only active U.S. rare-earth mine — yttrium makes up just 0.12% of the rare-earth content in the bastnaesite ore processed there, according to USGS’s 2026 Mineral Commodity Summaries. That’s why Mountain Pass output doesn’t meaningfully move the U.S. yttrium supply picture even though the mine is active.

On the global production side: China supplies 85-90% of global yttrium production capacity as of 2025, per ResearchAndMarkets’ Yttrium Market Report. Global annual consumption runs around 12,000 metric tons, and China’s exports of yttrium compounds and metal totaled 3,100 tons in 2024. Broader rare-earth concentrate production containing yttrium oxide equivalent ran 15,000-20,000 tons globally in 2024-2025, per ResearchAndMarkets’ separate Yttrium Oxide market report.

The market itself is small in dollar terms relative to how strategically important it is: DataMint Intelligence valued the global yttrium market at $121.5 million in 2025, projecting growth to $213.6 million by 2035. That’s a market smaller than many single mid-cap mining companies, concentrated almost entirely in one country’s processing capacity.

US Production, April 2026 Claims, and Import Dependence

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 — covering full-year 2025 data, the most recent complete figures available — recorded zero tons of domestic yttrium mine production and a 100% net import reliance figure for the United States. Total U.S. rare-earth oxide production in mineral concentrates (from Mountain Pass) was 51,000 tons in 2025, but as noted above, yttrium is only a trace fraction of that ore’s rare-earth content, and none of it is separated and refined into finished yttrium metal domestically at commercial scale according to USGS’s reporting.

On the specific claim of “USA rare earth yttrium metal production April 2026”: USGS’s annual report structure means 2026 production figures won’t be compiled and published until the Mineral Commodity Summaries 2027 release, expected February 2027. There is no USGS dataset that reports monthly or April-specific 2026 production. If a source claims a specific April 2026 U.S. yttrium production number, it isn’t sourced to USGS and should be checked against the original — as of this review, USGS’s most current published figure is the 2025 full-year figure (zero domestic mine production) cited above.

USGS updates this dataset annually, every February, at its Mineral Commodity Summaries rare earths report. The February 2027 edition will carry the first full-year 2026 production and import figures — check that release directly rather than any intermediate estimate for the current year.

Supply Risk Calculator: Your Yttrium Exposure

If you buy yttrium metal or oxide for a lab, a manufacturing line, or a research programme, the number that matters isn’t the spot price alone — it’s how much of your annual spend rides on a single-country supply chain. This calculator applies the 70% USGS-reported China import share to your own purchase volume and current pricing.

Assumptions: uses the September 2026 SMM industrial price, the April 2026 retail price, and a March 2026 oxide midpoint as fixed reference points — swap in your own current quote for accuracy. Excludes shipping, tariffs, and processing/refining costs beyond raw material price. The 70% default reflects USGS’s 2025 national import figure, not any individual supplier’s actual sourcing.

Tracking Critical-Mineral Supply Chains with Satellite Data

A market this concentrated — 85-90% of production capacity in one country, per ResearchAndMarkets — is exactly the kind of exposure that satellite monitoring and traceability tooling were built to surface, whether you’re managing a mine site, an agricultural operation using rare-earth-derived materials, or infrastructure that depends on YSZ ceramics and alloys.

• Satellite-Based Monitoring: Real-time, multispectral data for mining and agricultural sites, useful for tracking site activity and environmental conditions around critical-mineral operations. Get started via the
  
• Carbon Footprinting: Track emissions and sustainability metrics tied to mineral processing and transport. Visit the Carbon Footprinting page.
• Product Traceability: Supply-chain transparency tools for tracking the journey of critical minerals like yttrium from source to end use. See Product Traceability Solutions.
• Fleet Management: Operational oversight for mining and logistics fleets handling mineral concentrate transport. Details at Fleet Management.
• API and Developer Access: Integrate satellite and traceability data directly via the Farmonaut API and developer documentation.
• Large-Scale Operations: For enterprise and government users managing multi-site mineral or agricultural operations, see the Large Scale Farm Management suite.
• Mobile Access:
  
  

FAQ: Yttrium Prices, Uses, and Mining

Conclusion: A One-Country Supply Chain

Yttrium’s story isn’t really about exotic new applications — it’s ceramics, phosphors, and alloys, the same three categories USGS has tracked for years. The story is concentration: 100% U.S. import reliance, 70% of those imports from a single country, and 85-90% of global production capacity sitting in the same place. A market worth $121.5 million in 2025, projected to reach $213.6 million by 2035 per DataMint Intelligence, is small enough that a single policy change, export restriction, or processing bottleneck in one country can move global pricing overnight.

The figures in this article carry their vintage for a reason: USGS refreshes its production and import data every February, Shanghai Metals Market refreshes spot pricing daily. Check those sources directly before making a purchasing or investment decision, and use the calculator above with your own current quote to see exactly how exposed your own supply chain is.