A new partnership between ERI and Cyclic Materials could reshape how North America handles some of its most critical and hard-to-recycle materials. The two companies announced an agreement this week that will combine ERI’s massive electronics recycling infrastructure with Cyclic Materials’ proprietary technology for extracting rare earth elements from end-of-life products. The deal comes as governments and manufacturers worldwide grow increasingly anxious about supply chains for materials like neodymium and dysprosium, which are essential for everything from electric vehicle motors to wind turbines.
Under the arrangement, ERI will supply feedstock from the millions of pounds of electronics it processes annually at its facilities across the United States and Canada. Cyclic Materials will then use its extraction process to recover rare earth magnets and other valuable components that have traditionally been lost in standard recycling streams. Company executives said the collaboration targets a stubborn gap in the current recycling landscape, where rare earth elements are rarely recovered despite their growing strategic importance.
John Shegerian, co-founder and executive chairman of ERI, called the partnership a logical next step for an industry under pressure to deliver more complete material recovery. He noted that consumers and businesses bring enormous volumes of devices containing rare earth magnets into recycling programs every day, but until now those elements typically ended up shredded or shipped overseas. By working with Cyclic Materials, Shegerian said, those same devices can become a domestic source of materials that the United States currently imports almost entirely from China.
The partnership also aligns with broader policy momentum in Washington and Ottawa, where lawmakers have earmarked funding for initiatives that reduce reliance on foreign suppliers of critical minerals. Cyclic Materials has positioned itself as part of that push, operating facilities designed to process magnet waste and other rare-earth-bearing scrap into refined outputs suitable for reuse in manufacturing. Leaders at both companies suggested their agreement could expand over time, potentially including additional processing sites or new categories of recyclable material depending on how initial volumes perform.
Industry analysts say partnerships like this one reflect a shift in how the recycling sector thinks about value. For years, rare earth recovery was considered technically possible but economically marginal compared to mining fresh supplies. That calculus is changing rapidly as demand surges and geopolitical tensions make stable access less certain. Whether this particular venture delivers on its promise will depend on collection volumes, processing costs, and the ability of both companies to scale operations quickly enough to matter in a market that shows few signs of slowing down.