Itelyum: Rare earth recovery plant lacks input material

The scale-up of the pilot plant for recovering rare earth elements from permanent magnet recycling, which Itelyum inaugurated last September at its Ceccano (Frosinone) plant, with a capacity of 20 tons, is now complete. The initial phase is complete, and the company is now ready to invest €8 million in the development of a line to process 10,000-15,000 tons per year of professional electronic waste (WEEE) using permanent magnets. This line has the potential to produce 150,000-500 tons per year of rare earth oxides, precursors to the elements neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium, through a hydrometallurgical process.

The project, developed by a consortium that, in the scale-up phase, includes Itelyum, Erion, Eit RawMaterials, Glob Eco, and the University of L'Aquila. Already recognized and funded by European programs, it is also one of four Italian projects among the 47 selected by the European Commission as "strategic" for the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act, which came into force last year. These projects strengthen European supply chains for critical raw materials, reducing dependence on non-EU suppliers.

There are, however, some critical issues along the way, as Itelyum CEO Marco Codognola explains: "The plant is in the final design stage. The pilot phase has shown that the electrochemical process works, with interesting yields. Compared to the initial forecast, we need to invest a little more in more sophisticated flue gas treatment and incoming waste preparation, but we are ready. On the feedstock side, however, supply chains, including the Erion consortium, are struggling because they don't have enough permanent magnets, or waste containing them, to get us there. In the absence of an organized supply chain, such as in EPR (extended producer responsibility) models , those who have this waste often dismantle the magnet and do what they want with it, such as sending it to China or sending it to generic recycling facilities that don't allow for the extraction of rare earths. It's necessary to build a supply chain capable of supplying the plants defined as strategic at the European level: not all countries have them, but they must direct their flows to those that will be built. To do this, there is currently no adequate legislation that gives priority to recovery."

Codognola also highlights another obstacle, a frequent recurring issue in initiatives of this kind in Italy: authorization. "We haven't yet completed the authorization process for the industrial-scale plant. To build it, a substantial modification to the Integrated Environmental Authorization ( AIA ) is required, and we're preparing the documentation, hoping to obtain it more quickly than the previous one took two years. Given that this is a strategic project, I hope the Ministry of the Environment will take over the authorization process, as it already does in certain special circumstances, such as the redevelopment of sites of industrial interest. It's positive that both MIMIT and MASE have a responsible person for critical raw materials, and we therefore hope that the ministries' involvement will allow us to find solutions to the issues of waste procurement and authorizations, both of which are key enabling conditions for launching this project, which, I repeat, is strategic. The goal is to begin construction of the plant in early 2026."

While the recovery of rare earths is an interesting development—according to a Bain & Company report, annual European demand for rare earth oxides used in permanent magnets for electric cars and wind turbines is expected to reach 30,000 tons in 2030, worth approximately €1.5 billion—another area the company is closely monitoring is water. The group, which achieved revenues of €625 million in 2024, with an EBITDA of approximately 20%, has completed two M&A transactions so far in 2025, both in the water sector: in March, Brescia-based Specialacque, and then, as Codognola explains, "in June, we acquired an industrial water treatment company, GSA of Civita Castellana, which purifies 135,000 tons of water annually, often from the pharmaceutical sector in Lazio." We have now reached a treatment capacity of 600,000 cubic meters per year, which will increase to 800,000 with the revamping of the wastewater treatment facility at the Klk Temix plant in Calderara di Reno (Bologna), and to 1 million when the plant inside the Pieve di Fissiraga refinery (Lodi) is authorized to treat third-party wastewater. And I don't rule out further acquisitions. The sector remains interesting.