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Looking back at the EIT RawMaterials Expert Forum on Rare Earths & Magnets in Turin, where industry, OEMs, policymakers, investors and researchers met to discuss how Europe can build a competitive rare earth magnet value chain. The REEPRODUCE consortium was invited to hold its final event as part of the programme, where partners presented the project’s results, reaching TRL 7.

A few overall takeaways from the Expert Forum

For Europe’s industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy, there’s a shared view that Europe needs to move faster and commit more, as the dependency and supply chain is still heavily concentrated in China.

“Whether we talk about the automotive industry, the wind industry or general industry – every moving part in the industry has permanent magnets.” — said Dr. Erik Eschen, CEO, Vacuumschmelze, in the opening session on Europe’s industrial competitiveness and strategic autonomy.

 

European industrial capabilities are already strong and expanding. Companies operating in Europe have developed significant technological expertise and are moving forward with investments to scale up their capacities across the value chain. OEMs are also demonstrating strong interest in developing secure and resilient European supply chains for rare earths and permanent magnets. One shared challenge across the rare earths, magnets and batteries sectors is how Europe turns access to raw materials into dependable, competitive products that industry can use.

But the industry has the capabilities and the ambition to invest, and OEMs are demonstrating demand. Investment is needed where the bottleneck is today, especially in refining and recycling, along with turning the CRMA benchmarks on recycling into binding targets. And the first major EU funding commitments are now supporting the development of commercial-scale industrial capacity.

Finally, the European Commission presented the latest developments on its proposal to establish the CRM Centre, which will include a financing hub, joint purchasing and matchmaking, risk monitoring, stockpiling and the Raw Materials Observatory. The co-legislators are now negotiating what the Centre will look like in the end.

The REEPRODUCE Solution: presenting the project’s final results

The REEPRODUCE consortium presented the seven pilots the project developed over the past four years up to TRL 7. The next step is to bring them to TRL 8. The REEPRODUCE solution offers automated equipment for sorting, dismantling and extracting permanent magnets from different end-of-life products, such as HDDs and rotors.

REEPRODUCE offers a medium-loop recycling process, complementary to other long-loop and short-loop route processes, to produce Rare Earth Alloy (REA) at moderate cost, because the REO do not need to be separated. The solution is suitable for high feed versatility as well as high-performance magnets.

In terms of costs, pilot-scale production of Rare Earth Metal Alloy (REMA) from end-of-life EV motors was cost-competitive with REMA produced from virgin REE materials. At the project industrial scale, REMA produced through the REEPRODUCE process is expected to achieve even lower cost than REMA derived from virgin materials. However, for devices containing small quantities of permanent magnets, dismantling cost remains the main obstacle.

The next step would be now to bring together industrial partners in permanent magnet production to discuss the possibility to establish a small recycling facility based on the REEPRODUCE solution.

Thank you to the REEPRODUCE partners for their efforts and commitment over the last 4 years. Collaboration and teamwork have been the key of these results. The demonstration of innovative technologies through seven system prototypes covering the whole Neodymium permanent magnet secondary value chain, including metal manufacture, is an exceptional achievement.

Thank you European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA) for the financial support, and thank you EIT RawMaterials for organising the engaging forum and for hosting the REEPRODUCE final event, bringing together the stakeholders who shapes the future of Europe’s rare earths and permanent magnets industry.

A few photos from the final event: