Recycling Rare Earths: A Drop In The Bucket, Or Total Game Changer In Race Against China?

Two rare earth companies plan to pour $100 million into what they say will be the first magnet recycling plant of its kind in the U.S. as Washington looks to loosen China’s grip on the critical minerals supply chain.

US Strategic Metals (USSM) and Australian company Ionic Rare Earths signed a memorandum of understanding in November to develop rare earth magnet recycling facilities at USSM’s 1,800-acre processing site near Fredericktown, Missouri. USSM now plans to contribute $95 million toward construction, while another $5 million in equity contributions would be split between the companies to fund engineering and accelerate demonstration-scale recycling, according to Interesting Engineering.

“Recycled magnets have the potential to supply more than 20% of U.S. rare-earth feedstock over the next five to ten years, making recycling an increasingly important part of a secure domestic supply chain,” REalloys Inc. Chief Growth Officer Anupam Ghildyal told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Domestic recycling alone cannot break our dependence upon China for rare earth magnets. It may reduce our dependence over time, but we will need to dramatically ramp up domestic production and processing of rare earth minerals along with magnet production,” Steve Milloy, Senior Energy & Environment Legal Institute fellow, told the DCNF.

The proposed facility would recycle rare earth magnets and scrap used in products such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics and defense equipment, recovering valuable materials that can be reused to make new magnets, according to the outlet.

USSM and Ionic Rare Earths did not immediately respond to DCNF’s request for comment.

‘Enormous Scale’

“China has spent roughly four decades building this feedstock-agnostic processing ecosystem at enormous scale,” Ghildyal told the DCNF.

The problem extends beyond getting rare earths out of the ground. China controls roughly 97% of heavy rare earth processing, 95% of metal production and 90% of permanent magnet production. That means developing new American mineral deposits alone would not necessarily eliminate U.S. dependence on Chinese processing and manufacturing.

“Significant investments are underway to build that capability, but today, separation, metallization, and magnet manufacturing remain heavily concentrated in China. Without those downstream capabilities at home, even successfully collected and recovered material can remain dependent on Chinese capacity to complete the loop,” Abigail Hunter, Executive Director of SAFE’s Center for Critical Minerals Strategy, told DCNF.

China has already demonstrated its ability to squeeze those supply chains. Beijing imposed export restrictions on several rare earth elements in 2025, and some Chinese suppliers recently halted shipments to the U.S. amid concerns over geopolitical tensions and potential penalties from Beijing, Reuters reported. China nevertheless shipped 647 metric tons of rare earth permanent magnets to the U.S. in July, the second-highest monthly total since its export controls began, according to Reuters.

Washington has responded by pouring money into domestic alternatives. The Trump administration announced plans in February to establish a $12 billion critical-mineral stockpile designed in part to shield American manufacturers from Chinese supply disruptions. The Department of Energy also announced $72 million in June for projects aimed at boosting domestic critical mineral and magnet production.

The project would use Ionic Technologies’ recycling process, which has already been demonstrated at the company’s Belfast demonstration plant in Northern Ireland. The technology is designed to extract reusable rare earth materials from old magnets and manufacturing waste at greater than 99.5% purity, according to Interesting Engineering.

The Recycling Hurdle

“Even if we started today on these efforts, we would still be substantially dependent on Communist China for the next 5-10 years. China may very well not allow us that much time given its agenda, its rare earth and battery dominance, and our inertia and ineptitude at breaking supply chain dependence on China,” Milloy said.

Rare earth magnets are used across the U.S. economy, including in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, electronics and advanced manufacturing. Neodymium-iron-boron magnets are particularly valuable because their high energy density allows manufacturers to build powerful motors and generators while keeping their size and weight relatively low, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).

The magnets also have significant national security applications. Rare earth elements are used in satellites, aircraft and guidance systems, including the F-35 fighter jet and Virginia-class submarines, according to DOE. Powerful permanent magnets are used throughout the defense sector, while dysprosium and terbium are particularly important inputs in magnets designed to maintain their performance at high temperatures, according to the agency.

“Recycling has real potential for rare earths, but feedstock is the near-term constraint. The most near-term opportunity for recoverable magnet material comes from manufacturing scrap rather than end-of-life products, because the largest future source — magnets embedded in vehicles and wind turbines — won’t reach meaningful volumes for years, since those products stay in service for 18 to 30 years,” Hunter told DCNF.

But some industry experts say America has plenty of potential rare earth material, it just lacks the infrastructure to process it.

“America’s fundamental challenge is not a lack of feedstock – we have potential sources ranging from domestic and allied ores to mine tailings, recycled magnets and other secondary materials. The real bottleneck is feedstock-agnostic processing infrastructure capable of economically handling these diverse materials and converting them into separated rare-earth oxides, metals and ultimately magnets,” Ghildyal, told DCNF.

The Belfast demonstration facility currently processes about 30 tonnes of waste magnets and manufacturing scrap annually and has produced more than 10 tonnes of separated magnet rare earth oxides since June 2023, according to the outlet.

“Magnet recycling is the fastest and lowest-cost pathway to developing an ex-China rare earth supply chain in the United States,” Ionic Rare Earths Managing Director Tim Harrison said when the companies first announced their partnership in November 2025.

The companies are still negotiating definitive agreements and aim to reach a deal by the end of 2026. The joint venture remains contingent on those agreements, capital contributions and other conditions being met, according to the outlet.

“Securing enough material to recycle is only half the equation. The United States needs to build collection and recovery capabilities in parallel with the downstream capacity needed to turn recovered rare earths back into new magnets,” Hunter said.

The federal government is also backing new American magnet manufacturing directly. The Commerce Department finalized up to $1.6 billion in federal incentives and loans for USA Rare Earth’s domestic “mine-to-magnet” supply chain in June, including facilities designed to eventually produce as much as 10,000 tons of rare earth magnets annually, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“The United States needs to build comparable capability in the next decade if we want a truly independent rare-earth supply chain. REAlloys’ infrastructure is being designed from day one around that feedstock-agnostic model, including recycled magnets, allowing us to source from the most secure and competitive materials available rather than depend on any single mine, geography or feedstock,” Ghildyal told the DCNF.