Ucore Kingston Demonstration Facility

The Ucore Kingston demonstration facility is the RapidSX Commercialization and Demonstration Facility (CDF) that Ucore Rare Metals runs in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Ucore uses it as the scale-up and technology transfer platform for its planned Louisiana Strategic Metals Complex (Ucore).

Who runs the Kingston facility

In December 2023, Ucore said its commercialization partner, Kingston Process Metallurgy Inc. (KPM), operated the CDF, and KPM said it had helped develop RapidSX since Ucore acquired the technology in May 2020 (Ucore, December 2023). In its August 2026 quarterly report, Ucore still called KPM its research, development and commercialization partner and said the demonstration plant sits in a 5,000-square-foot building at KPM's facilities in Kingston (Ucore, August 2026).

How the Ucore Kingston demonstration facility separates rare earths

RapidSX keeps standard solvent extraction chemistry and runs it through a column-based system (Ucore). The International Energy Agency describes it as replacing large mixer-settler arrays with column-based contactors (IEA, May 2026), which puts Kingston in the advanced column separation category. Its demonstration role also puts it in pilot and R&D.

The site holds a 52-stage RapidSX demonstration plant (Ucore). Ucore says it also built two conventional solvent extraction pilot circuits there, of 52 and 80 stages, to compare results against RapidSX (Ucore, July 2026). Its Phase 1 output was mainly rare earth chloride products, with batch-scale oxide production from those chlorides on site (Ucore).

Status as of October 2026

Ucore started testing the plant in early 2023 and said on December 21, 2023, that commissioning was complete. That same month it began a U.S. Department of Defense demonstration program meant to compare conventional solvent extraction directly with RapidSX (Ucore, December 2023). Ucore reports about 7,400 hours of demonstration plant run time (Ucore).

In 2026 the facility moved to customer samples. Ucore reported 99.5%+ NdPr oxide shipped to magnet manufacturers in June (Ucore, June 2026) and 99.9% dysprosium oxide for planned customer qualifications in July (Ucore, July 2026). In August, its chief operating officer said Kingston would continue as a co-commissioning, technology development and training center (Ucore, August 2026). REEx called the dysprosium result an early-stage milestone rather than proof of commercial success (REEx).

Samarium, gadolinium and the Louisiana link

In October 2025, Ucore said the Government of Canada had conditionally approved support to demonstrate and scale up a commercial samarium and gadolinium processing facility in Kingston (Ucore, October 2025). In March 2026, Ucore said it was advancing engineering and commercialization planning for that dedicated samarium and gadolinium facility, that contactor factory acceptance testing was under way at the CDF, and that it had processed several feeds to test samarium and gadolinium splits (Ucore, March 2026). In its quarterly report of August 26, 2026, Ucore still described the planned Kingston samarium and gadolinium facility and said it did not yet have a definitive agreement with the Government of Canada for that support, which it expected to negotiate and finalize in the coming months (Ucore, August 2026).

In September 2026, Ucore said it was expanding samarium and gadolinium process development in Kingston for deployment on Enhanced Machine A, its first production line in Louisiana (Ucore, September 2026). Louisiana is a separate site in Alexandria. On October 27, 2026, Ucore said it was under construction and targeted installation and commissioning of Enhanced Machine A for the first half of 2027 (Ucore, October 2026).

Feedstock and offtake

Ucore reports processing material from monazite, bastnaesite, ionic clay and xenotime sources (Ucore), including about two metric tons of Vietnamese mixed rare earth oxide from ionic clay and about five metric tons of mixed rare earth carbonate from North American bastnaesite in 2026 (Ucore, August 2026). As of June 2026, REEx found no binding offtake agreements or qualification timelines disclosed (REEx).

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