The what’s, where’s and how’s behind our work

Ionic’s Rare Earths seperation technology converts REEs feed and rare earth concentrates into fully separated, high-purity oxides – all from a single feedstock – empowering end users to customise their orders for specific REOs.

This technology, proven at Ionic’s Belfast demo facility, efficiently isolates all 17 rare earth elements into their individual oxide forms. Through scalable deployments, our refineries will help drive global efforts toward a circular economy and secure sovereign supply of rare earth materials.

By mastering the downstream refining process, Ionic supports a robust, sustainable supply chain that seamlessly complements our recycling initiatives, delivering magnet-ready rare earth oxides for next-generation clean energy and advanced manufacturing needs.

We are currently developing refining operations in Brazil through our landmark Viridion JV, where Ionic Technologies’ innovation is critical in refining feed from VMM’s nearby Colossus Mining Project.

Refining rare earths is essential for bridging the gap between raw materials and high-performance magnets, ensuring a stable supply for critical industries including renewable energy (especially wind turbines), advanced manufacturing, and defence.

Ionic Technologies currently runs a fully operational demonstration plant and continues to develop a fully commercial plant in Belfast over the coming years, alongside the progression of significant refining and recycling facilities in Brazil through Viridion, Ionic’s joint venture with Viridis.

In the United Kingdom, our active demo plant recovers, separates and refines high-purity magnet Rare-Earth Oxides (REOs) from 30 tonnes per annum of waste magnets and swarf, producing over 10 tonnes of separated magnet REOs from June 2023. This successful demo plant has led to the ongoing development of a commercial-scale rare earth recycling facility in Belfast Harbour, specifically on Queens Island, with construction expected to begin in 2026.

The commercial Belfast facility will process pre-consumer and end-of-life rare earth magnet scrap, providing high-purity rare earth oxides (REOs) for various applications like defence technologies, electric vehicles and wind turbines. This supports greater supply chain collaboration with downstream metal, alloy and magnet manufacturers.

In South America, we are continuing efforts with the Viridion JV to develop a complete closed-loop supply chain and circular economy for magnet rare earths. Viridion’s pioneering operations cover a refinery plant and a recycling plant with manufacturing operations of REEs, REOs and NdFeB magnets. It is positioned to become the first major producer, covering the full suite of refined magnet REOs in South America.

Through the JV, our technologies will scale across numerous Ionic Clay projects in Brazil and Rare Earth Elements (‘REE’) projects globally. Progress is advancing to secure a site for both plants – the REO refinery plant and the magnet recycling facilities near existing Viridis operations.

The multi-capability project includes refining feed from VVM’s Colossus Project’s full spectrum of REEs and, most significantly, recycling operations that will give new life to spent NdFeB magnets from end-of-life electric motors and other industrial applications. Both the refinery and recycling operations rely on Ionic Technologies’ patented technologies to achieve their outcomes, utilising our technology developed at our facilities in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Ionic Technologies’ magnet recycling technology is designed to recycle spent NdFeB magnets from wind turbines, electric motors, defence technologies and other industrial applications.

This advanced recycling technology enables a scalable and sustainable repurposing of spent permanent NdFeB magnets, accelerating magnet recycling across the Western world.

Recycling rare earth element (REE) magnets is crucial for reducing reliance on environmentally harmful mining while recovering valuable materials from old wind turbines and other technologies.

Our recycling technology is pivotal technology helping to meet global recycling and processing targets, driving a circular economy, reducing waste, and ensuring sustainable material availability for future green technologies. Substantially, through a peer-reviewed (via Minviro) life cycle analysis of our technology, Ionic Technologies was proven to have accomplished a significant CO2 reduction of 30-50% per kilogram of separated Rare Earth Oxides compared to conventional REO production methods.

According to the Financial Times, the “…UK imports about 5,000-10,000 tonnes of rare earth magnets annually” yet “… only about 1 per cent are currently recycled”. Across the channel, a similar situation exists in the EU, where again only 1 per cent of all magnet waste is recycled within the EU.

A key component of this waste is wind turbines, which use rare-earth magnets, especially those made of neodymium or samarium-cobalt, in their permanent magnet generators (PMGs). With an already substantial – and steadily growing – pool of used or end-of-life (spent) magnets in the region, particularly from wind turbines at or nearing retirement, significant feed material is available for recycling into new materials and magnets. Ionic Technologies is working to fix this deficiency, with key efforts in Belfast driving progress to achieve both a 25 per cent recycled target and a 40% EU processing target.

We advance magnet recycling by processing secondary-sourced spent NdFeB magnets and swarf into secure, sustainable, and traceable separated and refined magnet REOs. Using our patented technology, we are progressing to commercialise modular, global deployment to satisfy sovereign capability initiatives.

Ionic Technologies’ proprietary technology provides a universal method for the recovery of high-purity REEs from lower-quality and variable-grade magnets, to be used in the manufacture of modern, high-performance and high-specification REPMs required to support substantial growth in both electric vehicle (EV) and wind turbine deployment.

The Ionic Technologies magnet recycling process is agnostic to magnet quality, can process oxidised magnets, and can also manage coatings and films to produce individually separated and refined high-purity REOs.

The technology developed is an advancement in efficient, non-hazardous, and economically viable processing with a minimal environmental footprint. Ionic Technologies has demonstrated the capability for REEs to achieve near-complete extraction of REOs from lower-quality spent magnets and waste (swarf), recovering high-value magnet REO products exceeding 99.5% purity.

Ionic Technologies now has a “first mover” advantage in the industrial elemental extraction of separated REOs from spent magnets and waste, enabling near-term magnet REO production capability to satisfy growing demand from the energy transition, advanced manufacturing, and defence.

Ionic Technologies’ new facility, located in the Titanic Quarter, Belfast, has been equipped with state of the art analytical and hydrometallurgical laboratories, in addition to piloting and demonstration plant bays to progress the scale-up verification of the technology. The team has migrated test work from Queen’s University Belfast across to our dedicated facility where we can continue the development of intellectual property around both magnet and heavy Rare Earth separation, and magnet recycling. 

Formerly ‘Seren Technologies’, Ionic Technologies is a spin-out company that emerged from the research conducted at Queen’s University Ionic Liquid Laboratories. Also known as the QUILL Research Centre, this is the oldest, most established centre dedicated to studying ionic liquids and their analogues.

As a member of QUILL we benefit from the centre’s research expertise. Additionally, our team has access to a network of industrial partners that are interested in sustainable technologies.

Ionic Technologies maintains its strong ties with the university where it originated, regularly collaborating with Queen’s University Belfast’s research departments. The collaborative and innovative approach we take to research ensures we remain at the forefront of sustainable technologies.