Recycling end-of-life electronics, wind turbines and other industrial equipment could provide the United States with a near-term source of rare earths as the country works to develop new mines and processing capacity, according to electronics recycler Paladin EnviroTech.
The company is expanding its rare earth recovery operations as US manufacturers confront heavy dependence on overseas supply, particularly for the heavy rare earth elements used in high-performance permanent magnets.
Paladin currently produces about 40 metric tonnes of recovered material annually and recently invested over $5 million to increase capacity to 150 tonnes per year on a three-shift basis. The expanded facility is expected to be operational by the beginning of the third quarter next year.
The company operates six facilities across the United States and another two in Europe — in the Netherlands and Ireland — with a South Korean operation planned. Paladin also intends to replicate its rare earth recovery capabilities in Europe and Korea.
The world needs new critical minerals mines to meet growing demand for the clean energy transition, digital infrastructure, and defense, though the exact number depends on recycling rates and shifting battery technologies, according to the IEA.
“Mining is absolutely necessary. You’re not going to get rid of the need for mining,” Luke Wray, Paladin’s SVP, Critical Materials & Defense told MINING.COM in an interview. “But you can help solve that short-term problem right now by addressing end-of-life assets and some of these technologies.”
Mining’s long lead times
Washington’s push to build domestic critical mineral supply chains has put renewed attention on developing US rare earth deposits. But bringing conventional mines into production can require lengthy permitting, significant capital and construction of associated processing infrastructure.
Paladin says recycling can complement those projects while they move through development.
“Finding a mine, permitting it, and then it’s a heavy CapEx investment,” Wray pointed out. “There’s a long lead time on getting a mine up and operational and producing too.”
End-of-life equipment offers a potentially faster route because recycling facilities can be modular and deployed in existing industrial locations with comparatively simpler permitting requirements, he said.
“With waste and end-of-life assets, it’s a lot quicker to scale. It can be a modular system so you can rinse and repeat location-wise.”
Paladin’s strategy has increasingly focused on equipment containing permanent magnets, ranging from hard disk drives and data centre infrastructure to electric vehicle motors, generators and wind turbines.
Hard drives contain neodymium and praseodymium, with trace amounts of terbium, while larger industrial equipment can provide access to heavier rare earths such as dysprosium.
That distinction could prove particularly important for US supply chains.
Wind turbines and large generators can contain magnets with relatively high dysprosium content, while MRI machines represent another potentially significant source. Wray said magnets recovered from MRI machines can contain roughly 13% to as much as 16% dysprosium.
Hard drives become an urban mine
Paladin has partnered with Western Digital on recycling end-of-life hard drives and works with Critical Materials Recycling (CMR) of Boone, Iowa, which uses a non-acidic selective leaching process originating from Ames National Laboratory.
The companies have worked to commercialize the technology for rare earth recovery, and the partnership covers the company’s end-of-life hard drive recycling.
According to Wray, the process can recover about 90% of the overall intrinsic value contained in a hard drive when steel, circuit boards and other metals are included. Rare earth recovery efficiency itself is closer to 97%-98%.
The recovered material can also make its way back into the magnet supply chain.
Paladin produces a mixed rare earth oxide that can be supplied to separation companies before entering magnet manufacturing. In one case, recovered material was supplied to magnet producers serving Western Digital and returned to a manufacturing line while meeting the company’s specifications.
That closed-loop approach could become increasingly important as data centre construction accelerates alongside artificial intelligence investment.
Wray said data centre assets are typically retired every three to five years, creating an expanding stream of equipment that could become feedstock for mineral recovery.
“There needs to be more capital deployed into the space,” he said, pointing to rapid growth in AI infrastructure. “They’re retiring assets every three to five years.”
More recycling infrastructure will be required to handle those volumes, Wray added.
Competing with China
Economics remain one of the biggest challenges. China’s rare earth industry benefits from enormous scale, low operating costs and an established processing and manufacturing ecosystem that is difficult for Western producers to match.
Paladin nevertheless sees opportunities for recycling companies to compete by extracting value from the entire end-of-life asset rather than relying solely on the rare earth content.
In the wind turbine business, for example, Paladin can generate revenue from steel, copper, brass and reusable components before considering the value of the permanent magnets.
“The magnets at that point, you’re getting at no cost. They’re just a by-product,” Wray said. “So now anything that you’re able to generate on the sales side from those oxides, it’s all icing on the cake.”
The company also sees signs that Western rare earth pricing is beginning to support recycling economics. Paladin said transactions are emerging in which material can be acquired at prices competitive with Chinese benchmarks and sold into Western markets at higher prices.
That can create a roughly 10%-20% spread, according to Wray.
“I do think that it can be financially viable,” he said. “I think that we’re seeing it right now in our business.”
Paladin does not currently receive government funding, although it is considering pursuing grant opportunities. The company is backed by Silicon Valley-based private equity firm SER Capital.
For Paladin, recycling is not a substitute for developing new rare earth mines. Rather, it represents another source of material that can be deployed more quickly while domestic mining, separation and magnet manufacturing capacity catches up.
The opportunity could grow further as the AI boom produces an expanding stream of retired data centre equipment and the first generation of large-scale renewable energy infrastructure reaches the end of its operating life.
“There’s a lot of ways to address a problem and start to generate these minerals, these materials and onshore them,” Wray said. “There’s not one solution. There’s going to be a lot of solutions that play at this.”