Cyclic Materials starts commercial operation of rare earths recovery facility in Arizona

The facility is poised to make its first commercial shipments to US customers later this month.

The Mesa facility marks the world’s first commercial-scale deployment of Cyclic’s proprietary MagCycle technology, which delivers automated mechanical separation of magnets from end-of-life products, and serves as the front-end of Cyclic’s integrated rare earths recovery platform.

The facility is producing rare earth magnet material, which Cyclic calls Mag-Xtract, and critical minerals such as copper, aluminium and steel.

The Mesa facility is an important milestone in Cyclic’s buildout of nationwide critical material recovery infrastructure. A new South Carolina rare earth recycling campus is in development, which will combine the company’s magnet recovery and rare earth refining platforms on a single site.

Cyclic has built a strong commercial supply network across the US, securing significant volumes of magnet-bearing feedstock through long-term commercial partnerships.

More than 7 000 t of end-of-life material has already been delivered to the Mesa facility.

Cyclic CEO and founder Ahmad Ghahreman expects global demand for rare earths to triple by 2035, driven by AI, automotive, robotics, electronics, energy and defence applications.

Building infrastructure to recover rare earths from end-of-life products is one of the fastest routes to securing domestic supply, Ghahreman states, especially given how geographically concentrated the global rare earths supply chain is.

Notably, Cyclic’s new facility was completed just 17 months after first being announced, which Ghahreman says demonstrates the company’s repeatable deployment model to establish domestic rare earths supply capacity on an expeditious timeline.