Cyclic Materials REEs for circular economy

Despite what their name may suggest, the suite of 15 elements known as rare earths is not all that scarce. One thing that is hard to come by, however, is technology up to the difficult task of efficiently separating this suite of tech metals into their lone elements – Cyclic Materials aims to change that.

Founded in 2021, Canada-based Cyclic Materials has been working toward creating a sustainable, domestic supply chain for rare earths and other metals through an innovative recycling process that circulates REEs back into the manufacturing process, reducing the environmental impact.

REEs are among the least recycled metals due to the difficulty of separating the various magnetic materials in end-of-life products. In light of this, with the global market for rare earths forecast to increase nearly three-fold by 2030, establishing new supply chains and sources for these critical metals is beyond critical.

As these elements are paramount to electrification and decarbonization due to the critical role they play in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and consumer and industrial appliances, Cyclic wants to provide a new supply stream for this challenging elemental family.

To support this effort, at the end of April, the advanced metals recycling company announced the successful financing of $27 million from interested parties seeing the potential in this company.

"We are very excited about this new funding and our new partnerships with EIP (Energy Impact Partners), BiV (BMW i Ventures), Fifth Wall, and BIC (Bioindustrial Innovation Canada), which will provide the capital required for the scale up of our technologies and help us plan our future growth in North America, Europe, and Asia," said Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and Co-founder of Cyclic Materials. "With the support of our partners we intend to continue advancing the scale of our technologies in order to meet the rising demand for rare earth elements in the near future and enable a more sustainable future."

Hoping to take the pressure off mines, as well as reduce the dependence on foreign powers, Cyclic is among a few able to break into the rare earths recycling market to create critical minerals security as well as contribute to sustainability practices that are otherwise not seen from the global REE magnet distributor.

These "magnets are mostly supplied from only one country and what we are doing is we are recycling those magnets from end-of-life products to put them back into the applications," Ghahreman said in a 2022 video discussing their pilot plant in Ontario, Canada.

In addition to this, the company says using recycled REEs consumes less water, reduces waste, and has a significantly smaller carbon footprint. In fact, the startup says recycled REEs require as little as 40% of the CO2 emissions of newly mined material.

Beyond rare earths, Cyclic Materials' process recycles copper, aluminum, steel, cobalt, and nickel as well – metals that are also required for electrification and decarbonization. In addition to these, the startup also says its process is producing high-purity recycled rare earth oxides; REEs sold as oxide compounds.

As these compounds are used across numerous industries, including semiconductors, the backbone of modern electronics from consumer devices, communications, and computing, to healthcare, military systems, and transportation, if these oxides could be made from recycled materials and injected where needed, it would open a myriad of doors for a future circular economy.

Already experienced with its successful pilot plants, such as the one in Kingston, Ontario, and already distributing samples to potential customers, the latest funding will enable Cyclic to scale up its technology to curb the demand for these elements.

Cyclic Materials may only be a startup now, but by 2026, Ghahreman says they will be fully established across North America.

"Our production of mixed rarest oxide is expected to be 600 tons per year and by the end of 2030 we will be globally installed and our production of mixed rarest oxide, our key product, will be over 3,000 tons per year," he said in the video. "This is good for our environment and also it opens up a new source of material that the industry will appreciate."