Highlights

• German magnet giant VAC signs a 10-year exclusive deal with Cyclic Materials.
• The deal aims to recycle 100% of manufacturing waste at VAC's South Carolina facility.
• A closed-loop production system will be created using MagCycle℠ and REEPure℠ technologies.
• The partnership represents industrial policy in action, addressing supply chain security.
• This occurs as Beijing tightens export controls and Washington's 2027 defense import deadline approaches.
• The agreement is limited to manufacturing scrap rather than post-consumer materials.
• It signals strategic progress toward rare earth supply chain independence.
• The deal has backing from major investors including Amazon, Microsoft, and BMW.

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There’s a quiet revolution underway in Sumter, South Carolina — not at the mine, but in the machine shop. Vacuumschmelze (opens in a new tab) (VAC), the German magnet giant now anchored in America through its eVAC Magnetics facility, has inked a 10-year exclusive recycling deal with Canada’s Cyclic Materials (opens in a new tab) to recover and reuse 100% of the plant’s magnet manufacturing waste. In a sector obsessed with extraction, this story is about return — the rare earths coming home again.

From Swarf to Sovereignty

The agreement covers every gram of production by-product (“swarf”) generated at eVAC’s facility, slated to start operations by late 2025. Using Cyclic’s proprietary MagCycle℠ and REEPure℠ technologies, that scrap will be processed into recycled mixed rare earth oxides (rMREOs) and re-fed into VAC’s own magnet production lines. It’s elegant industrial symmetry — and a powerful proof that circularity can coexist with national security.

The facts hold up: Cyclic raised $57 million in Series B funding last year from a blue-chip roster — Amazon, Microsoft, Hitachi, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, and Energy Impact Partners — to scale precisely this type of process. VAC, meanwhile, has been methodically building the American half of its rare earth footprint. The company’s U.S. magnet facility is designed to complement upstream feedstock from emerging producers like Pensana Plc, whose chairman, Paul Atherley, recently told Rare Earth Exchanges that his company aims to create “a full ex-China mine-to-magnet route” linking Angola and the U.S.

What’s Real and What’s Rhetoric

The circular economy angle is genuine — and critical — but it’s also media catnip. The agreement concerns manufacturing waste, not post-consumer scrap, meaning it’s a closed-loop inside VAC’s ecosystem rather than a broad national recycling solution. The press release positions this as a “North American supply chain,” but for now, that chain is more symbolic than self-sufficient.

Why It Matters

Still, symbolism counts. With Beijing’s export controls tightening and Washington’s 2027 defense import deadline looming, the partnership between Cyclic and VAC is more than a recycling story — it’s a statement of intent. This is industrial policy in motion, embodied by two companies turning waste into a strategic advantage.

Source: Cyclic Materials Press Release, Oct. 22, 2025; Rare Earth Exchanges interview with Pensana Chairman Paul Atherley, “Charting a New Ex-China Rare Earth Supply Route and Model for Africa and America.”

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