Itelyum, rare earths recovery plant lacks input material

The scale-up of the pilot plant for the recovery of rare earths from the recycling of permanent magnets that Itelyum inaugurated in its Ceccano (Frosinone) plant last September is ready, with a capacity of 20 tonnes. The initial phase is complete and the company is now ready to invest EUR 8 million for the development of a treatment line for 10-15 thousand tonnes per year of professional electronic waste (WEEE) with permanent magnets, with the possibility of producing by hydrometallurgical process 150-500 tonnes per year of rare earth oxides, precursors of the elements neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium.

The project, developed with a consortium that in the scale-up phase, in addition to Itelyum, includes Erion, Eit RawMaterials, Glob Eco and the University of L'Aquila, already recognised and financed by European programmes, is also one of the four Italians among the 47 selected by the European Commission as 'strategic' for the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act that came into force last year because they strengthen European critical raw materials supply chains by reducing dependence on non-EU suppliers.

However, there are some critical points along the way, as Itelyum CEO Marco Codognola recounts: 'The plant is in its final design. The pilot phase has shown how the electrochemical process works, with interesting yields. Compared to the initial forecast, something more needs to be invested in more sophisticated flue gas treatment and in the preparation of the incoming waste, but we are ready. On the input feedstock side, however, the supply chains, including the Erion consortium, are struggling because they do not have enough permanent magnets, or waste containing them, to bring to us. In the absence of an organised supply chain, as in the EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility, ed.) models, often those who have this waste disassemble the magnet and do what they want with it, such as send it to China or send it to generic recoveries that do not allow the extraction of rare earths. It is necessary to build a supply chain capable of feeding the plants defined as strategic, at a European level: it is not certain that all countries have them, but they must direct their flows towards those that will be built. To do this at the moment there is no adequate legislation to prioritise recovery'.

Codognola also points out a further obstacle, which often returns in initiatives of this kind in Italy: authorisation. "At the moment we have not completed the authorisation process for the industrial-scale plant. In order to build it, it is necessary to obtain a substantial modification of the AIA (integrated environmental authorisation, ndr), and we are preparing the documentation, hoping to be able to obtain it faster than the previous one took two years. Considering that this is a strategic project, I hope that the Ministry of the Environment will take over the authorisation process, as it already does in some special circumstances, such as the conversion of sites of industrial interest. It is good that both Mimit and Mase have a person in charge of critical raw materials, and we hope that the involvement of the ministries will allow solutions to be found to the issues of waste supply and authorisations, both of which are enabling conditions to get this project started, which, I repeat, is strategic. The goal is to start construction of the plant in early 2026'.

If the recovery of rare earths is an interesting development - according to a report by Bain&Company, the annual European demand for rare earth oxides used in the permanent magnets of electric cars and wind turbines is set to reach 30,000 tonnes in 2030, worth around EUR 1.5 billion - another front the company is looking at closely is the water sector. The group, which reached a turnover of 625 million in 2024, with Ebitda of around 20 per cent, has so far carried out two M&A operations, both in the water sector: in March the Brescia-based Specialacque and then, as Codognola recounts, 'in June we acquired an industrial water treatment company, Gsa of Civita Castellana, which purifies 135 thousand tonnes per year of water that often arrives from the pharmaceutical sector in Lazio. We have now reached a treatment capacity of 600 thousand cubic metres per year, which will become 800 thousand with the revamping of the wastewater treatment plant of Klk Temix in Calderara di Reno (Bologna), and 1 million when the plant inside the refinery in Pieve di Fissiraga (Lodi) will have the authorisation to treat third-party water. And I do not exclude other acquisitions. The sector remains interesting'.