California's Maglut to scale novel seperation tech for rare earths
California-based Maglut Heavy Industries has unveiled a water-based process to separate rare earths at a globally competitive cost level and with a strong social licence to operate.
Having taken inspiration from a separation technique that the biotech industry has spent decades refining to purify biological medicines, Maglut aims to reinvent this technology for rare earths processing at scale.
Unlike solvent extraction, which has historically been a labour- and energy-intensive method to separate rare earths, Maglut's chromatography-based platform uses its own resin technology in-house to produce high-purity rare earth oxides at a globally competitive cost and without the toxic solvents used in conventional processing.
"Rare earth processing is one of the clearest examples of a sovereign capability America let atrophy. 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," says Maglut co-founder and CEO Curtis Wu.
Maglut is the only vertically-integrated chromatography company, with its "ARC-1" process having been validated at pilot scale to separate real-world feedstock into individual rare earth oxides at 99.9% purity.
The launch of Maglut's novel separation technology comes as rare earth supply chains face renewed scrutiny.
Beginning in January 2027, new rules by the Department of War require defence contractors to remove China from their rare earth magnet supply chains, creating clear long-term demand for domestic alternatives.
"At the same time, decades of cost improvements in chromatography, paired with rising rare earth prices, have created an opening for a new approach to take hold," Wu explains.
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