DENVER : USA Rare Earth (NASDAQ: USAR) has successfully produced commercial-grade dysprosium oxide and neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide from recycled magnet scrap at its hydrometallurgical facility in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. This milestone marks a significant step in the company’s efforts to establish a domestic, circular supply chain for critical minerals essential to high-performance magnets used in aerospace, defense, and electric vehicles (EVs).
The achievement comes on the heels of a massive federal backing, with the company recently securing a funding package of up to $1.6 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act. The successful separation of heavy rare earths like dysprosium from recycled “swarf”: fine scrap generated during the magnet manufacturing process: validates the company’s proprietary recycling flowsheets and underscores its capability to produce high-purity materials outside of traditional Chinese-dominated supply routes.
Validating the “Swarf” Recycling Loop
The raw material for the production run was sourced from USA Rare Earth’s magnet manufacturing plant in Stillwater, Oklahoma. During the precision machining and finishing of neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets, a fine metallic residue known as swarf is produced. Traditionally, this material is difficult to process and often sold back into global markets where it is recycled overseas.
By processing this swarf at the Wheat Ridge facility, USA Rare Earth has demonstrated a closed-loop system. The facility utilized multi-stage solvent extraction circuits to separate the metallic waste back into its constituent high-purity oxides. According to company executives, recycling this manufacturing scrap could eventually supply up to 30% of the company’s total magnetic rare earth oxide feedstock requirements.
“This is a fundamental shift in how we view manufacturing waste,” noted a technical advisor involved in the project. “We aren’t just making magnets; we are capturing the value of every gram of material that passes through our facilities. Producing commercial-grade dysprosium from scrap is a technically demanding process that few Western companies have mastered at this scale.”
The Wheat Ridge Technical Milestone
The Wheat Ridge facility serves as the company’s central hub for hydrometallurgical demonstration and process optimization. It is designed to handle three distinct types of feedstock in parallel: ore from the company’s Round Top heavy rare earth deposit in Texas, third-party mixed rare earth carbonates (including those from international partners like Serra Verde in Brazil), and recycled NdFeB magnet swarf…