Canadian circular rare earths company Cyclic Materials has completed a $75-million strategic financing round, which reflects expanded commitments from existing investors and brings the company's total equity funding to $237-million.

The capital can now accelerate development of its rare earth recycling campus in South Carolina and expand its hub-and-spoke infrastructure across the US - increasing domestic production capacity for rare earths and critical minerals used in AI technology, robotics, defence, automotive, medical and other advancing manufacturing sectors.

Cyclic is nearing commissioning of its first commercial "Spoke" plant in Arizona this quarter, which operates as a magnet separation and recycling plant. It uses a proprietary process to extract rare earths from end-of-life magnetic products such as electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and electronic scrap. The facility is designed to process up to 25 000 t/y of end-of-life components.

The "Spoke" facilities of the company are aimed at handling the local sourcing, sorting and initial processing of feedstocks. The recycled material is then sent to a centralised "Hub" such as Cyclic's upcoming campus in South Carolina, for final refining and chemical isolation of high-purity rare earth oxides.

Commenting on Cyclic's latest financing round, T.Rowe Price investment analyst Vineet Khanna says Cyclic continues to demonstrate itself to be a market leader in rare earths recovery, having advanced its commercial operations, expanded its US footprint and secured strategic partnerships across the critical material supply chain.

Cyclic plans to start construction at the integrated rare earths recycling campus in the fourth quarter.

The South Carolina facility will combine the company's magnet separation, rare earths recovery and refining platforms at scale.

"By expanding our Hub-and-Spoke network, we are building an integrated domestic critical material ecosystem, from feedstock sourcing and manufacturing scrap recovery to rare earth production," says Cyclic founder and CEO Ahmad Ghahreman, adding that the additional capital will enable the company to move faster in South Carolina and across the US.

Meanwhile, the latest financing round of the company welcomed ERI as a strategic investor, following Cyclic and ERI signing an agreement earlier this year to have ERI use its nationwide electronics collection and processing network to identify, secure and pre-process products containing rare earth magnets and other critical materials for recovery by Cyclic.