Ionic Rare Earths Limited’s (ASX: IXR) 100% subsidiary Seren Technologies has been granted £1.72 million from the UK Government Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC).
Ionic completed the acquisition of SerenTech on April 22, 2022. The APC is a non-profit organisation that facilitates funding to UK based research and development projects developing low-carbon emission powertrain technologies, funded by UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and managed by Innovate UK.
SerenTech applied for the grant under the Innovate UK Automotive Transformation Fund Scale up Readiness Validation (SuRV) programme to develop a demonstration scale magnet recycling plant, a significant step towards securing the UK supply of critical rare earth metals for Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacture.
The magnet REO products are also crucial for facilitating offshore wind farm development. The grant offering is part of the 1130: SuRV competition and will now accelerate activity at SerenTech.
The SuRV competition targeted supporting businesses by part-funding the validation of products and their associated processes, as ready for scale-up, with a particular focus on producing physical samples, which can be used to validate a pilot production process.
The SuRV competition allocated £25 million to validate readiness for scale-up of low-carbon technology and processes. Up to £2 million in grant funding was available for individual projects – with SerenTech receiving £1.72 million of this pool.
“This is a tremendous endorsement from the UK Government and the APC on the potential for scaling our technology offering from SerenTech,” Ionic’s Managing Director, Tim Harrison, said.
“This grant validates the significance of magnet recycling in a tight supply market as well as pointing to the additional value for IonicRE shareholders in the longer-term.
“Since Ionic’s acquisition of SerenTech earlier this year, the team has been busy setting a platform to accelerate from the pilot scale studies at Queens University Belfast, and now relocation to a new commercial facility in Belfast, where a demonstration scale 30 tonne per annum magnet recycling circuit can be housed.
“The scale of the proposed demonstration plant will produce sufficient quantities of separated REOs for further product development with industry partners.” “Magnet recycling already represents approximately 25% of the current processed magnet REO production globally, which is dominated by China. “In developing this technology, Ionic is positioning itself as a vertically integrated rare earth participant developing and delivering a circular rare earth business plan.
“We expect that the importance of a circular rare earth economy will increase dramatically over the next few years as the energy transition away from carbon gathers more momentum, and desire from governments to develop alternative secure supply chains amplifies.”
For further information please visit: https://ionicre.com.au/
