USA Rare Earth said Sept. 9 it was breaking ground on a $1.2 billion, 800,000-square-foot plant in Blacksburg, South Carolina. The facility is designed to add annual capacity for 6,400 metric tons of magnets and 5,000 metric tons of strip-cast metal.
Together with planned expansion at its Stillwater, Oklahoma, facility, the South Carolina plant is part of a plan to produce 10,000 metric tons annually each of magnets and strip-cast metal by 2029. USA Rare Earth describes its broader effort as a mine-to-magnet business spanning mining, processing, alloy production and magnet manufacturing.
The company completed a roughly $2.8 billion acquisition of Serra Verde on Sept. 3, gaining ownership of the only scaled production outside China of all four magnetic and other critical heavy rare-earth elements, according to the article. It also acquired Texas Mineral Resources, giving it full control of the Round Top project, where it hopes to begin commercial production around 2028. The company has raised $1.6 billion through CHIPS Act grants and loans; the article says the funding is dilutive through share issuances and required future equity raises, and characterizes the stock as high-risk as the company scales.
