On a chilly October afternoon, a line formed outside an unassuming industrial building in Exeter, N.H. The scene had all the elements of a fall festival: live music, carnival games, a food truck.
But plush animals and popcorn were not the big draw. It was the chance to tour Phoenix Tailings’ new warehouse, which the company is aiming to turn into one of the largest rare earth mineral processing facilities in the United States.
Rare earth elements aren’t all that rare — they’re found in many places in small quantities. But they are hard to extract from the earth and turn into something usable. And they’re valuable in the U.S. economy, used to create special magnets that go into in everything from medical devices to F-35 fighter jets to electric vehicles.
The Phoenix Tailings facility in New Hampshire puts the state on a growing map. Across the country, processing operations are popping up with the same goal: to provide an onshore alternative to rare earth metal refining now almost exclusively provided by China.
The company’s CEO, Nick Myers, described the start-up’s beginnings as he prepared to cut a ceremonial ribbon. Phoenix Tailings started with “five kids in a backyard saying that we can change the world and how we actually do metals production,” he said.
But Myers has big goals. The company says their Exeter plant will produce 200 tons of rare earth metals each year. Ultimately it plans to scale up to more than 1,000 tons per year — enough to supply the entire United States defense industry’s needs, according to the company.
Plus, the company says, they’ll do all of that with no toxic emissions.
What is going on in the Phoenix Tailings building?
At the sparsely furnished Exeter warehouse, the company’s main function is to turn a powdery substance containing rare earth minerals into metal that can be used in industrial production. At one end of the facility, pallets hold massive white bags of this “feedstock,” essentially a concentrated version of rare earth elements that have been extracted from the earth.
“It kind of looks like dirt,” said Matthew Cowley, a mechanical engineer at Phoenix Tailings. “But it is very valuable.”
Part of the company’s name, “tailings,” refers to where they hope to source their materials: waste products from other mining operations.
Phoenix Tailings wouldn’t say where they get their feedstock as of now. But a main part of their business proposition is that none of their inputs, equipment or technology come from China.
Right now, the facility is producing neodymium-praseodymium and dysprosium-iron alloy. But Phoenix Tailings is hoping to expand to include dysprosium, terbium, samarium, gadolinium, germanium, gallium and other metals.
How does mining with no emissions work?
The rare earth refining industry has a reputation for being dangerous. From the mining itself to the separation and processing of the metals, pollutants like cadmium, lead, radioactive material, and hazardous chemicals can pose risks for people and environments. Phoenix Tailings says they are trying to change that.
One of the toxic steps in refining these rare earth minerals is the metallization process, which can emit hazardous gases. Phoenix Tailings uses technology to capture those emissions.
First the company uses a machine to heat up the feedstock. Then, it goes into a metallization machine, turns into a molten liquid, and gets poured into a mold. The end product is a bar of metal. Next to the metallization setup is a collection of tanks that look a bit like R2D2 from Star Wars. Those machines “scrub” gas from the metallization process, treating the harmful exhaust.
“What this machinery does, it allows us to be able to operate in residential neighborhoods,” Cowley said. “All of this equipment here essentially removes any of that toxic or harmful gas.”
He said it also ”allows us to basically have some byproducts that come out of it that can then be reused or resold to other other manufacturers or reused in our own system.”
Cowley said he couldn’t share what exactly the byproducts were. A company representative said they were additives and chemicals commonly used in industrial facilities.
In a filing with the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, the company says their facility will generate less than 100 kilograms per month of hazardous waste, and they plan to recycle it at their site. They list “used waste oil” and “spilled corrosive residues and absorbent materials” as the wastes. The company also has a permit from the state’s Air Resources Division to operate an emergency generator.
In their “no emissions” label, Phoenix Tailings doesn’t count emissions from the electricity they use at their building in Exeter. They also aren’t counting other parts of the process – the original mining, the processing that happens before feedstock arrives, the transportation. A representative said the company is “working backwards” to eventually clean up those steps.
The parts of the process that happen before feedstock arrives at Phoenix Tailings are where a lot of the danger happens, said Ian Lange, an economics professor at the Colorado School of Mines. For example, rare earths are commonly found with radioactive materials — thorium and uranium. Processing them requires getting rid of radioactive material.
“If you ignore the processing and mining stage, you probably get away from a lot of the potential impacts,” he said.
Where does the Exeter plant fit in the rare earths industry?
Extracting and processing rare earth elements is tough business, Lange said. There are 17 elements, generally found together, that are known as “rare earth elements.” But only a handful of them are useful for human endeavors. And they’re tough to separate.
“It’s just not a very profitable thing,” Lange said.
And, over the past 15 years or so, China became very good at the process as the nation’s industrial system put effort into supporting the industry.
“China is basically the world’s pre-separator of these minerals,” Lange said. “They already have more than the world needs. And so if you wanted to try to compete with them, they could easily crush you.”
That dynamic has shifted recently, as U.S. leaders have become more explicit about developing independent sources of minerals. In July, the Trump Administration made an agreement to support MP Materials, an American company aiming to do every part of the process, beginning with the mining at a site in California.
MP Materials also has a facility in Texas that is expecting to produce 1,000 tons of rare earth metals, alloys and magnets. That company says they plan to create a new facility that could produce 10,000 metric tons of rare earth materials per year — more than 60% of the country’s demand.
“That’s really raised the valuation of every rare earth stock,” Lange said, as investors explore the potential for a larger industry in the U.S.
But the promise of that industry is tied to the idea that federal leaders will continue to push to decouple with China, Lange said. The current hustle in the U.S. to move away from reliance on Chinese minerals could shift with the tides of international politics.
Plus, demand for rare earth metals may not grow as much as companies have assumed. Some industries where rare earth elements could be used, like electric vehicles and offshore wind turbines, have faced pushback from the Trump Administration.
But it’s still early days. And, Lange said, the small facility in Exeter where Phoenix Tailings is making metal could be a big deal.
“There’s probably two or three places in the world outside of China that could even do this,” he said.
Anthony Balladon, the chief commercial officer at Phoenix Tailings, said the company intends to continue growing.
“With this facility, the goal is to increase production five times within the next few months and years, and ultimately turn this into a rare earth production hub not just for the United States, but for the world,” he said.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.