Chris McDonald MP cutting the ribbon at the opening of Birmingham’s rare earth magnet recycling facility. Photo by the University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham has launched a world-leading facility that will separate and recycle rare earth magnets at Tyseley Energy Park in Birmingham. Scaling up from a proof -of concept facility that handled 50-100kg batches, the new
recycling plant can recover over 400kg of rare earth alloy per batch, producing up to 100 tonnes of magnets per year on a single shift (or more than 300 t/yr on multiple shifts).
The technology was developed by the Magnetic Materials Group at the university’s Birmingham Centre for Strategic
Elements and Critical Materials (BCSESM). It has been exclusively licensed to HyProMag, now a fully owned subsidiary
of Canadian company Mkango Resources, which is also developing rare earths deposits in Malawi.
The scaled up project was made possible with the help of £4.5m ($6m) funding from British research agency Innovate UK’s Driving the Electric Industrialisation Centres (DER-IC), with supporting grants via the Innovate Climates Programme, EPSRC, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, and EU Horizon grant.
The University of Birmingham is an academic associate member of the MMTA.
