Dive Brief:
- Cyclic Materials, a metals recycling company for rare earth and other critical metals, will expand its recycling partnership with Vacuumschmelze. The company, known as Vac, produces magnets used in automotive, defense, industrial and renewable energy applications.
- Under a 10-year agreement, Cyclic Materials will use its proprietary recycling process to recycle all of the magnet production byproducts generated at Vac's upcoming manufacturing facility in Sumter, South Carolina. That new facility is expected to open near the end of the year, according to a news release.
- The agreement is an extension of Cyclic Materials and Vac’s existing partnership, established in 2024, to recycle critical materials that Vac processes. The updated agreement also allows Vac to reintegrate the recycled mixed rare earth oxides Cyclic Materials produces back into its own production processes, the company says.
Dive Insight:
Toronto-based Cyclic Materials has been looking to grow its North American partnerships in recent years, especially as it gets ready to open its first U.S.-based recycling facility in Mesa, Arizona, in 2026. Cyclic is actively expanding its strategic feedstock supply network, which the company envisions will serve the entire U.S.
In recent years, efforts to boost U.S. domestic supply chains for critical minerals used in electronics, batteries and magnets has become a federal economic and manufacturing priority. That’s because other countries currently corner the market on certain minerals commonly used for those items.
Cyclic says its recycling process converts materials into a mixed rare earth oxide product used to make magnets for items like EV motors, wind turbines and consumer electronics.
Its $20 million commercial facility in Arizona, announced earlier this year, is meant to be the company’s first global rare earth element recycling operation, Cyclic said. It will focus on separating magnets from end-of-life products “previously not recovered,” it said.
In June, the company announced that it also plans to build a $25 million recycling plant and research center in Kingston, Ontario. That facility, meant to process 500 metric tons of material a year, is expected to open sometime in the first quarter of 2026. The 140,000-square-foot facility is designed to recycle magnets from end-of-life products as well as other “industry magnet waste.”
The company, backed by funding from Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, says it has future plans to expand into Europe.
VAC, plans to make neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets at its South Carolina facility, which was funded in part from a U.S. Department of Defense grant. VAC said the recycled byproducts it processes through Cyclic will produce raw materials that have up to a 75% lower carbon footprint compared to mined raw materials. That allows VAC's customers “to source environmentally friendly rare earth magnets with lower Scope 3 emissions,” the company said in a news release. VAC says certain industries, such as automobile manufacturing, can use the recycled magnet components to meet certain net-zero production goals.
“With the extension of our partnership with VAC, we're collectively building more momentum towards our goal of building a North American supply chain,” said Ahmad Ghahreman, co-founder and CEO of Cyclic Materials, in a news release. “VAC brings not only a reliable source of raw materials for extraction but also decades of expertise in rare earth magnet technology.”
