Editor’s note: Electronics recycling will be featured in sessions at the 2026 E-Scrap: The Longevity Conference Oct. 26-28 in New Orleans.
Cyclic Materials is opening the first of its kind commercial-scale rare earth mineral recycling facility, the company announced Wednesday.
The facility in Mesa, Arizona, will have an annual processing capacity of up to 25,000 metric tons of material. It will use Cyclic’s proprietary MagCycle automated technology to separate magnets from end-of-life products and make the company’s rare earth magnet concentrate, Max-Xtract, which is made from minerals such as copper, aluminum and steel. That material is then sold to companies to create new magnets for use in industries such as automotive, AI and energy.
The technology is going into wider use after a couple years of testing at the company’s facility in Kingston, Ontario.
Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and founder of the Ontario-based company, said the new facility will offer a domestic source for mineral recovery and processing. This will help the company meet a presidential determination given over the summer to keep mineral supplies on shore, he said.
“This facility delivers new capacity for the US to keep resource-rich products here and build domestic rare earth supply,” he said. “Cyclic is quickly closing gaps in the domestic supply chain as we expedite our rare earth and critical mineral infrastructure development in the US. This means shaving months, if not years, off the delivery of critical materials.”
The Arizona facility took 17 months to build and has already received more than 7,000 metric tons of material for processing; company leadership said “substantially greater volumes” have been secured across the company’s feedstock pipeline.
To help bolster that pipeline, Cyclic entered into an agreement with ERI in July to prepare feedstock for processing. ERI will use its recycling facilities to sort and pre-process material from magnet-bearing electronics, then send that material to Cyclic for mineral extraction. The companies will also jointly pursue projects for recycling and mineral recovery.
The first shipments of Cyclic product made in Arizona should be made to US customers before the end of the month.
This facility is expected to serve as a model as the company builds a nationwide network of processing facilities. A rare earth mineral recycling campus is expected to open in 2028 in South Carolina that will operate both magnet recovery and rare earth refining; a groundbreaking is slated for the fourth quarter of this year.
Cyclic has raised $237 million in equity funding to help pay for this buildout, which will feature a hub-and-spoke infrastructure across the country. Most recently the company raised $75 million in strategic financing late last month.
“The continued support of our investors is enabling us to build vital US rare earth infrastructure at a time when it has become a national priority,” Ghahreman said.
