A new rare earth recycling plant in Arizona could create another domestic source of materials needed for EV motors, wind turbines, and a long list of other products.
Cyclic Materials has opened its first commercial-scale rare earth magnet recycling facility in Mesa. The plant can process up to 25,000 metric tons of magnet-bearing end-of-life products annually.
The company hasn’t specified which products are being processed at the facility, but it signed a huge deal with electronics recycler ERI in July. Its technology is designed to mechanically separate magnets from discarded equipment and recover materials for return to US manufacturing.
That matters to the EV and renewable energy industries because rare-earth permanent magnets are used in many EV traction motors and wind turbine generators. They’re also found in electronics, robotics, industrial equipment, AI hardware, and defense applications.
The Mesa plant is the first commercial-scale deployment of Cyclic’s proprietary MagCycle technology. It produces a rare earth magnet concentrate called Mag-Xtract, along with copper, aluminum, and steel.
More than 7,000 metric tons of magnet-bearing material have already been delivered to the facility, according to Cyclic, and processing is underway. The company expects to make its first commercial shipments to US customers later this month.
“This facility delivers new capacity for the US to keep resource-rich products here and build a domestic rare earth supply,” said Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and founder of Cyclic Materials. “Cyclic is quickly closing gaps in the domestic supply chain as we expedite our rare earth and critical mineral infrastructure development in the US.”
Cyclic says global demand for rare earth elements is projected to triple by 2035, driven by the automotive, energy, AI, robotics, electronics, and defense sectors. At the same time, the rare earth supply chain remains heavily concentrated in China, leaving manufacturers vulnerable to trade restrictions and other geopolitical disruptions.
Recycling can supplement newly mined supplies by recovering valuable materials from products that have reached the end of their useful lives. For EV and renewable energy manufacturers, that could eventually mean another US source of materials used to make motors and generators.
Cyclic completed the Mesa facility 17 months after announcing it. The company is also developing a recycling campus in South Carolina, scheduled to open in 2028, that will combine magnet recovery and rare earth refining at a single site.
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