SMX Secures the Global Race for Rare Earths and Critical Minerals

NEW YORK CITY, NY / March 16, 2026 / SMX (Security Matters) PLC (NASDAQ:SMX) brings trust and authentication to global rare earth and critical mineral supply chains at a moment when demand for these materials has surged beyond politics, beyond tariffs, and beyond national borders. Rare earth elements and strategic minerals power the technologies that define the modern economy-from electric vehicles and renewable energy systems to semiconductors, aerospace systems, and advanced defense platforms. As global competition for these resources intensifies, SMX's traceability technology enables these materials to carry a permanent, verifiable identity as they move through global production networks-protecting supply chains and the massive investments behind them.

SMX provides a powerful solution through its traceability technology, enabling rare earth elements and critical minerals to carry a permanent, verifiable identity as they move through global production networks. By ensuring the authenticity, origin, and chain of custody of these materials, SMX safeguards the enormous financial investments tied to their extraction, processing, manufacturing, and trade.

Rare earth elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are foundational to many of today's most important technologies. They are essential components in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, high-performance electronics, and advanced semiconductor systems. As industries worldwide accelerate their demand for these materials, the ability to verify their provenance and integrity across complex supply chains has become increasingly important.

Yet the pathways that deliver these resources are often highly fragmented. Rare earth elements typically move through numerous stages-including mining, chemical separation, refining, alloy development, magnet production, and final assembly into finished technologies-often across multiple countries and jurisdictions. These multi-stage supply chains can make it difficult to establish clear provenance or maintain a transparent chain of custody, creating potential risks related to substitution, mislabeling, regulatory exposure, and sanctions compliance.

SMX addresses these challenges by embedding microscopic markers directly into physical materials. These markers remain with the material throughout its lifecycle, creating a persistent identity that can be detected and authenticated at any stage-from extraction and processing to advanced manufacturing and final product integration.

Through SMX's physical-to-digital identity platform, these identifiers connect to a secure verification infrastructure that records and authenticates a material's journey across the supply chain. The result is an auditable system that allows supply-chain participants to confirm origin, validate authenticity, and maintain transparent documentation as materials move across global markets.

For industries dependent on these resources-including renewable energy, electric vehicles, semiconductors, aerospace, and defense-this level of traceability provides a powerful layer of assurance for operational continuity and capital investments.

Governments around the world are increasing their focus on securing critical mineral supply chains as part of broader economic and national-security strategies. As regulatory frameworks, sustainability mandates, and transparency requirements evolve, technologies capable of verifying the origin and chain of custody of strategic materials are becoming essential tools for compliance, accountability, and investment protection.

SMX's platform is designed to maintain continuity of identity even as materials undergo multiple transformations during processing and manufacturing. Rare earth elements can be tracked as they move through refining, alloy production, magnet manufacturing, and component integration-ensuring that the underlying identity of the material remains verifiable across the entire production lifecycle.

While the technology supports rare earth supply chains, its applications extend across the broader ecosystem of strategic minerals and metals. SMX's traceability platform can also be applied to materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, and other resources that underpin the global energy transition and advanced manufacturing industries.

In a world where demand for critical materials has eclipsed politics and transcended borders, SMX delivers the trust and authentication required to protect supply chains, strengthen transparency, and safeguard the investments that power the modern economy.

Contact: Jeremy Murphy /

SOURCE: SMX (Security Matters)