Nth Cycle, IonicRE team up to establish rare earth refining pathway

US critical minerals refiner Nth Cycle announced on Wednesday a joint development and licensing agreement with supply chain developer Ionic Rare Earths (ASX: IXR) to establish end-to-end rare earth refining operations domestically and abroad.

Under the terms, Nth Cycle will work to integrate its proprietary electro-extraction technology into Ionic’s rare earth recycling and refining operations, creating what would be the first production pathway that bypasses China for both long-loop recycling to high purity form, and the chemical agents they produce to purify rare earth swarf into oxides for new magnet manufacturing.

Integration of the technology into Ionic’s facility in Northern Ireland is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, Nth Cycle said.

In March, the Massachusetts-based company signed a binding 10-year agreement with Trafigura valued at $1.1 billion in Tokyo at the first Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum.

Hidden dependency for rare earth refining

China currently refines 90% of the world’s rare earth elements found in ore and end-of-life materials, with recovery occurring during precipitation, a step reliant on oxalic acid, a reagent they produce.

This, Nth Cycle says, creates a hidden dependency facing all domestic refiners building operations onshore, and while that capacity will reduce processing in China, it won’t reduce dependence on them to process here.

The two companies said they will work to replace the precipitation step in IonicRE’s flowsheet with Nth Cycle’s electro-extraction closed-loop process, which uses electricity to produce the chemicals — rather than oxalic acid — to convert rare earth recycled feedstocks into high-purity oxides, the solid powders used in magnet metal production.

“Rare earth refining in the US has made progress, but building a resilient supply chain in the West requires solving every point of dependence, not just the most visible ones,” Nth Cycle CEO Megan O’Connor said in a news release.

“Nth Cycle’s technology closes one of the largest remaining links to Chinese chemical supply chains in the rare earth refining process,” she continued. “And because our electroextraction platform works across rare earths, nickel, cobalt, copper and beyond, every application of our system accelerates the critical mineral supply chains our economy and national security depend on.”

“Nth Cycle gives us a technology pathway that lowers our operating costs and removes one of the most critical of those vulnerabilities. That is exactly the kind of partnership that makes domestic refining genuinely viable,” IonicRE CEO Tim Harrison added.