Ionic Rare Earths Limited (ASX: IXR) has confirmed that production of high purity, recycled magnet rare earth oxides (REOs) has begun at the Demonstration Plant at Ionic Technologies International Ltd Belfast facility in the UK.
“Our Belfast facility is key to us harnessing our technology to accelerate our mining, refining and recycling of magnets and heavy rare earths which are critical for the energy transition, advanced manufacturing, and defence,” Tim Harrison, Managing Director at Ionic Rare Earths, said.
“The commercialization of our recycling technology and our focus on the delivery of the Makuutu Heavy Rare Earths Project in Uganda positions us to provide a secure, sustainable, and traceable supply of magnet REOs.”
The Belfast facility is expected to receive a steady supply in magnets to be recycled from sources such as end-of-life turbines from grid scale wind farms and magnets and components from used electric vehicles and MRIs.
Mr Harrison commented further that “market analysts forecast the current US$3B global market for rare earth oxide magnets is expected to shortly be in deficit with estimates that the market would increase fivefold, to in excess of US$15B, by the end of the decade, with significant demand growth in the EU, north Asia, and the US.”
“To help fill this deficit, Ionic Rare Earths wants to accelerate its mining, refining and recycling to align with global policy priorities and off-taker objectives in order to enter these markets.”
“Ionic Rare Earths are planning to progress the technology with the deployment of modular recycling initiatives in markets looking to develop domestic, secure, and sustainable supply chains to address strategic supply and sovereign security, placing Europe at the epicentre of rare earth element recycling”.
The products produced to date in Belfast during process commissioning include a selection of products which the company has been targeted based upon potential supply chain partner requirements, including;
• 4.2kg of Nd2O3 grading 99.7%, and ~0.3% Dy2O3 (total REO content of 99.99%); and
• 0.6kg of Dy2O3 grading 99.8 % (total REO content of 99.9%).
The company will now utilize these products and additional near-term production of NdPr oxide (didymium oxide) to progress further on more engagement with potential supply chain collaboration partnerships to explore commercial opportunities.
About the production of REOs at Ionic Technology:
Ionic Technologies is a wholly-owned subsidiary based in Belfast UK, which the company acquired in H1 2022. Ionic Technologies has developed rare earth element separation and refining technology and applied this to the recycling of spent permanent Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) magnets.
The process uses a hydrometallurgical process to extract the rare earth elements (REE), then separate the individual magnet REEs within – Neodymium (Nd), Praseodymium (Pr), Dysprosium (Dy) and Terbium (Tb) – and finally refine to high purity individual magnet rare earths oxides (REO).
In September 2022, IonicTech was awarded a grant of £1.72M (approximately A$2.9M) from the UK Government’s Innovate UK Automotive Transformation Fund Scale-up Readiness Validation (SuRV) program. This is a significant step towards securing the UK supply of critical rare earth metals for EV manufacture.
The magnet recycling Demonstration Plant will provide the data for the development of commercial facilities.
Ionic Technologies has an inventory of feedstock to support the Demonstration Plant trials, which currently sits at in excess of 50t of NdFeB permanent magnets and swarf material.
The Ionic Technologies magnet recycling process is agnostic on magnet quality, can process oxidized magnets, and can also manage coatings and films, to produce individually separated and refined high purity REOs.
For further information please visit: https://ionicre.com.au/
