Rare-earth magnet recycling plant opens in the UK
A new facility for separating and reprocessing rare-earth magnets has opened at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham. It builds on a proof-of-concept plant that could already process batches of 50 to 100 kg. The expanded facility, however, can recover over 400 kg of rare-earth alloys per batch and process them into new sintered magnets. Its capacity is 100 tonnes per year in single-shift operation, but this could potentially exceed 300 tonnes with multiple shifts.
The recycling process was developed and patented by the Magnetic Materials Group at the University of Birmingham and commercialised by its spin-out, HyProMag, which was acquired by the Canadian exploration company Mkango Resources in 2023. The process involves treating magnet scrap with hydrogen to produce a neodymium-iron-boron alloy powder. This recycled powder is then used to manufacture sintered neodymium-iron-boron magnet blocks.
These magnets are critical for applications such as smartphones, speakers, wind turbines, and, most importantly, electric vehicles. They are used in electric motors, specifically in permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM). In these motors, the permanent magnets are located in the rotor. Their static magnetic field interacts with the dynamic magnetic field generated by the coils (electromagnets) in the stator, causing the rotor to rotate.
The recycling plant received £4.5 million in funding from Innovate UK’s “Driving the Electric Revolution Industrialisation Centres” (DER-IC), supported by grants from the Innovate Climate Programme, the EPSRC, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, and EU Horizon funding. The facility also supports the UK government’s Critical Minerals Strategy, published in November 2025, which aims for the UK to meet 10% of its annual critical minerals demand from domestic sources and 20% through recycling by 2035.
Industry Minister Chris McDonald said: “This new facility is great news for the West Midlands which will help create hundreds of well-paid local jobs and is testament to our world-leading expertise in rare earth recycling.” He added: “This is our Critical Minerals Strategy in action, bringing sintered magnet manufacturing back to the UK for the first time in 25 years and backing innovative projects to boost our critical minerals supply chains and power the green industries of the future.”
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