Maglut Heavy Industries unveils US rare earth processing strategy 

Maglut Heavy Industries announced Wednesday it is developing a chromatography-based platform to process and refine rare earth elements domestically at an industry event at its pilot-scale facility in Long Beach, California.  Founded in 2025, the privately held company said it has validated its ARC-1 separation process on real-world feedstock, achieving 99.9%+ purity on individual rare earth oxides. Rare earths are vital for electric vehicles, advanced technologies and defense systems, but the US relies heavily on foreign nations—primarily China, which controls roughly 90% of global rare earth separation and refining—for finished rare earth materials.  Maglut said its approach takes inspiration from a separation technique the biotech industry has spent decades refining to purify biologic medicines, and reinvents it for rare earth processing at scale. While solvent extraction is the labor- and energy-intensive method historically used domestically and abroad, Maglut said its water-based process is designed to separate rare earth elements at a globally-competitive cost. “Rare earth processing is one of the clearest examples of a sovereign capability America let atrophy,” Maglut CEO Curtis Wu said in a news release. “The countries that control access to critical minerals will shape the next era of technology. Our mission is to rebuild domestic manufacturing of rare earth materials by reimagining the way they are processed.” Maglut said it is the only vertically-integrated chromatography company designing and manufacturing its own resin and ligand technology and is targeting a globally-competitive cost structure. The company said decades of cost improvements in chromatography, paired with rising rare earth prices, have created an opening for a new approach to take hold. Rare earth supply chains face renewed scrutiny as, beginning in January 2027, new Department of War rules require defense contractors to remove China from their rare earth magnet supply , creating clear long-term demand for domestic alternatives.  “Our next milestone is demonstration-scale deployment, where we will begin selling commercial rare earth oxides,” Wu said in an email to MINING.com. “That facility is expected to be fully operational by August 2027.” Wu also said Maglut is in active conversations with both potential feedstock suppliers and potential offtake partners for its purified oxides. “In the near term, Maglut is focused on demonstration-scale deployment of ARC-1 and recruiting top talent to advance its mission,” he said. “Longer term, the company aspires to deploy its critical minerals platform to the processing of other critical minerals.” Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Mining.com