K. Stoll
Critical Materials Recycling,
United States
Summary:
The U.S. rare earth industry faces a paradox: strong demand signals and tight timelines from OEMs, defense, energy, and advanced manufacturing, yet persistent difficulty translating promising technologies into scaled, reliable domestic supply. Key challenges include rapidly scaling to commercial operations to meet industry demands; the ability to rapidly adopt and deploy more efficient processing methods, in contrast to many incumbent manufacturing models that remain locked into legacy process flows—often preserving unnecessary steps that add cost, complexity, and inefficiency; and aligning fragmented players across mining, recycling, processing, and end-use manufacturing. This talk will examine why these bottlenecks continue to limit growth, why technology alone is not enough to solve them, and provide solutions and pathways forward. The presentation will focus on the technical and commercial requirements for scaling rare earth solutions, including strategic partnerships, vertical integration, and market-aligned process design that enables the rapid adoption of more efficient processing methods. Particular attention will be paid to the role of recycling and secondary feedstocks, the realities of material variability, and the importance of building systems that can operate economically on an industrial scale rather than under idealized laboratory conditions. Finally, the talk will highlight emerging models that address these challenges by integrating feedstock acquisition, processing, and offtake into cohesive value chains. Using the formation of REcapture—a joint venture between CMR and Paladin—as a case example, the session will illustrate how collaborative structures can de-risk scale-up, stabilize feedstock supply, and accelerate the development of a resilient domestic rare earth ecosystem.