Ribbon cutting at Cyclic Materials Mesa, Arizona plant. Image: Amanda Stutt.
Cyclic Materials opened its first commercial-scale rare earth magnet recycling facility in Mesa, Arizona on Sept. 9, hosting a ceremony attended by government, industry, stakeholders and investors.
The plant adds significant domestic processing capacity as the United States seeks to reduce its reliance on concentrated foreign supplies of critical minerals.
The 144,000-square-foot facility has capacity to process up to 25,000 metric tonnes of magnet-bearing end-of-life products annually, making it the largest rare earth magnet recycling facility of its kind, according to the company.
The plant also represents the first commercial-scale deployment of Cyclic Materials’ proprietary MagCycle technology, which mechanically separates permanent magnets from end-of-life products and forms the front end of the company’s integrated rare earth recovery platform.
The facility produces Cyclic’s Mag-Xtract rare earth magnet material while also recovering critical materials including copper, aluminum and steel.
Commercial operations are already underway. Cyclic said the feedstock-agnostic plant is processing material at a rate of eight tonnes per hour and selling recovered products to US smelters.
More than 7,000 metric tonnes of material have already been delivered to the Mesa site, with substantially larger volumes secured through the company’s supply pipeline. The first commercial shipments to US customers are expected later this month.
The opening comes as Washington increasingly views recycling as an important component of rebuilding domestic rare earth supply chains.
Rare earth permanent magnets are critical components in industries ranging from automotive and electronics to robotics, energy and defense. Cyclic said global rare earth demand is projected to triple by 2035, while production and processing remain heavily concentrated geographically, exposing supply chains to geopolitical disruption.
The Trump administration recently identified end-of-life rare earth permanent magnets as containing recoverable critical materials essential to national defense, highlighting the need for domestic recovery and processing capacity.
The Toronto- based company said the Mesa operation provides US companies with a domestic destination for magnet-bearing products that would otherwise be exported as waste.
From garage experiment to commercial plant
For Cyclic Materials founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman, the opening marks the culmination of an idea that began with an old laptop during the covid-19 shutdowns.
Speaking at the plant’s opening ceremony, Ghahreman recalled taking apart the hard drive of a laptop he had purchased during his PhD and extracting the magnet inside.
His doctoral work focused on hydrometallurgy — the chemical extraction of metals — and the discarded computer ultimately became an unlikely starting point for the technology now operating at commercial scale in Arizona.
“I guess it’s fitting that the very last job of the same laptop was to help me figure out the very first iteration of the process that we have installed here today; MagCycle,” Ghahreman said.
“That experiment in my garage became the beginning of Cyclic Materials.”
The company moved rapidly from announcing the Arizona investment to commissioning the plant.
Cyclic said the facility was completed 17 months after it was first announced, a timeline the company says demonstrates that its recycling infrastructure can be replicated quickly as the US works to expand domestic critical minerals capacity.
William Kimmitt, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, said at the opening that more than $20 million had been invested in the Mesa operation.
L: William Kimmitt, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade and Cyclic CEO Ahmad Ghahreman speak at the plant opening. Image: Amanda Stutt.
The project has also created dozens of skilled jobs in Arizona.
“More than 20 million dollars invested here in Mesa, dozens of new skilled jobs for Arizona workers, 140,000 square feet of industrial capacity and the ability to process approximately 25,000 metric tons of products containing rare earth magnets every year,” Kimmitt said.
“That’s what I call an outcome.”
Kimmitt pointed to the speed with which the project was developed, saying the company had moved “with speed and with purpose” from investment announcement to commercial operation.
He also framed the project as part of a broader US effort to rebuild industrial capabilities around strategically important materials.
“Rare earth materials are essential inputs across some of the industries that matter most to America’s economic and national security,” Kimmitt said.
“For decades the United States has become too reliant on concentrated foreign supplies.”
For Cyclic, the Mesa plant is intended to demonstrate that recycling can provide a comparatively fast route to new domestic supply.
Rather than waiting for entirely new primary supply chains to be developed, the company is targeting rare earth magnets already embedded in discarded equipment and other end-of-life products — recovering materials that can be returned to the US industrial supply chain.
With commercial processing now underway in Mesa, Cyclic is moving that strategy from pilot-scale technology to industrial production.
Next up in the company’s long-term strategy accelerating deployment of its rare earth recycling campus in South Carolina, which it plans to break ground on Q4 2026, and the expansion of its Hub-and-Spoke infrastructure across the US.
