RarEarth: EIC Accelerator Bet on Recycled Rare Earth Magnets

Almost every rare earth magnet used in Europe is made in China, and almost none of the ones Europe throws away are recycled. RarEarth, a Milan start-up founded in 2023, takes neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets out of end-of-life motors and electronics, cleans them chemically and turns the material into new magnets. The EIC Accelerator selected the company at its 6 May 2026 cut-off for blended finance, and the company and its incubator announced on 25 June 2026 a €2.5 million grant to fund its first production plant, with an equity investment of up to €6 million open to negotiation, per Forbes Italia.

The award is five months old. What can be checked so far is the process the company describes, the money it has raised and the plant it wants to build, which in August 2026 was still before the planning authorities near Ancona.

From dead motors to new magnets

NdFeB magnets sit in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, drones, robots, MRI machines, hard disks and audio devices, the markets the company lists for its own product. RarEarth describes a direct, "magnet-to-magnet" recycling route, as Avvenire put it in October 2026.

On its website the company lists the steps: semi-automated disassembly that it says isolates magnet-bearing parts six times faster than by hand, thermal demagnetisation, a two-stage chemical purification it calls patented, milling to a fine powder and the production of new magnets with more than 80% recycled content. Its incubator I3P wrote in July 2025 that the process recovers close to 100% of the magnetic material. Forbes Italia and the company say the recycled magnets match the performance of magnets made from virgin material. No test data, magnetic grades or third-party measurement has been published, and a web search of patent records on 4 November 2026 found no patent naming the company or its founders, so the patent cannot be identified here.

The roadmap on the same website puts polymer-bonded magnets, in which the powder is held in a plastic binder, in 2026 and sintered magnets in 2028. The company has announced no sale of either product.

The money and who put it in

In July 2025 RarEarth closed a €2.6 million capital increase led by Primo Capital SGR through its Primo Climate fund, with MITO Tech Ventures as co-lead and Corbites Fund, Vento Ventures and COREangels Climate taking part, per I3P and StartupBusiness. The stated uses were the first Italian site to make NdFeB magnets from recycled material, a larger team and process optimisation. I3P's June 2026 note also lists €1.3 million from Smart&Start Italia; no second source for that figure could be found.

Accounts of the EIC award differ. Forbes Italia, I3P and StartupBusiness describe a €2.5 million grant plus an equity investment of up to €6 million that the company may negotiate. BeBeez calls the €2.5 million itself blended finance combining grant and equity. CORDIS lists no RarEarth project as of 4 November 2026, and 2026 cut-offs are often not listed yet, and the EIC Fund's list of invested companies does not include the company. Avvenire put total funding raised at about €10 million in October 2026; none of the itemised announcements breaks that figure down.

A plant in the permitting stage

In February 2025 Forbes Italia reported that the company was finishing a pilot plant at a new operating site in Italy, without naming the place. The industrial plant now has an address. Il Resto del Carlino reported on 5 August 2026 that RarEarth plans a facility at Borghetto, on the SP76 in Monte San Vito near Ancona, next to the company Idromarche. The activity is classed as an "industria insalubre"; a Conferenza dei Servizi to assess it had just opened, and the project still needed authorisation from the province. The town council unanimously approved a motion to monitor its environmental impact, and the mayor told the paper that "insalubre" does not necessarily mean harmful.

A search of news on 4 November 2026 found no report of the conference's outcome. No source found states the plant's capacity, the investment or the number of jobs.

The company is also exploring a second route. On 26 January 2026 it signed a memorandum of understanding with Haiki+, a waste management group, to study joint projects for a plant recovering neodymium from magnets in electronic waste, according to Materia Rinnovabile, a publication owned by Haiki+. The memorandum covers an exploratory technical and industrial analysis, not a plant.

Why Brussels backs magnet recycling

The European Parliament's research service found that the EU sources 98% of its rare earth magnets from China, Euronews reported in May 2026, and an earlier Euronews report gave the same 98% alongside 85% of the EU's rare earth elements. On the recycling side, a CORDIS article on the SUSMAGPRO project quotes Allan Walton of the University of Birmingham saying that less than 5% of end-of-life magnets are recycled, and notes that the EU mines less than 10% of the rare earths it needs for NdFeB magnets.

The Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for extraction, processing and recycling, caps reliance on any one third country at 65% of consumption, expects EU demand for rare earth metals to rise sixfold by 2030 and sets recyclability and recycled-content requirements for permanent magnets. The STEP Seal that came with RarEarth's award marks the project as fitting the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform. RarEarth is not the only Italian magnet recycling project: in June 2026 the environment ministry authorised on 16 June 2026 a plant at Itelyum's Ceccano site under the INSPIREE project, a separate initiative, Ecoseven reported.

What the project promised, and what can be checked

1. First production plantIn permittingSite at Monte San Vito before a Conferenza dei Servizi in August 2026, per Il Resto del Carlino; no outcome reported.
2. Recycled magnets matching virgin performanceClaimStated by the company and Forbes Italia; no test data published.
3. Bonded magnets in 2026, sintered in 2028Not yet shownRoadmap on the company website; no product sale announced.
4. 76% lower carbon footprintClaimCompany figure; no life-cycle assessment published.

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.