Solving America's Rare Earth Magnet Crisis: The Key is More Manufacturing, Not More Mines (NASDAQ: EMAT)

WSW, NY, August 20th, 2026, FinanceWire

America has a rare earth magnet crisis it cannot mine its way out of. The rock is radioactive, so the job is making magnets from scrap and already-separated metal. Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: EMAT) is already commercially producing those magnets.

Rare earth magnets are a cornerstone of U.S. consumer goods, industry, and military hardware, essential in everything from a car’s windshield wipers to precision guided missiles. Every country’s heavy reliance on rare earth magnets makes them a major geopolitical and national security focus, because China produces approximately 94% of the world's high-strength rare earth permanent magnets.

Mining of rare earth elements will not break China’s dominance in the production of high performance magnets. Currently, China only accounts for about 60-70% of the rare earth elements that are mined, but it commands roughly 91% of the processing, illustrating that midstream manufacturing controls the current supply chain, not mining.

Mining more rare earth elements will not immediately help solve the bottleneck in magnet production because the United States has to solve for the radioactivity associated with processing mined materials in the oxides necessary to produce magnets. Mining operations focus on monazite, a complex phosphate mineral that contains high concentrations of rare-earth metals, most notably neodymium, cerium, lanthanum, and yttrium. However, monazite almost always contains significant amounts of radioactive thorium, thus monazite is naturally radioactive. While China mines and processes monazite with an industrial base built decades ago, refining ores that concentrate 0.05% or more uranium or thorium is a licensed nuclear job in the United States, not a prohibition. Commercial monazite concentrates may contain 3 to 14 percent thorium oxide. The U.S. Geological Survey says no domestic facility recovered thorium in 2025.

Due to the challenges associated with thorium, mining rare earths is not an immediate solution to the U.S. rare earth magnet crisis. The solution is recycling end-of-life high performance magnets that have already solved for thorium and manufacture new magnets. Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: EMAT) is one of the few companies already doing that.

The United States has a magnet crisis it cannot solve by mining and it is starting to realize that. On July 30, 2026, the White House issued a Presidential Determination invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA) to delegate authority to the Secretary of Commerce to institute strict export controls on "recoverable critical minerals and materials" (CMMs). Rather than raw, mined materials, this order targets electronic waste and scrap to require domestic recycling. The restricted materials that may not be exported include End-of-life rare-earth permanent magnets, "black mass" (the industry term for shredded lithium-ion battery components), and “swarf” (metal turnings or filings from manufacturing), as well as other electronic waste containing critical minerals. Independent reporting from the Basel Action Network, covered by AP, puts U.S. e-waste exports at nearly 33,000 metric tons every month. By blocking these exports, the administration intends to stop sending highly valuable, recoverable materials to foreign competitors, primarily China, which currently dominates the global processing of rare earths. Further, recapturing rare earth elements already within the U.S. provides a much faster remedy to supply shortages than the time and investment needed in mining and processing the ore, especially with the issue of radioactive thorium. The Presidential Determination dovetails with a January 1, 2027 defense-buying rule, DFARS 252.225-7052, that bars U.S. defense contractors from delivering certain critical minerals and magnets mined, refined, or made in China and other covered countries. The export restriction is intended to aid U.S. manufacturers in procuring the raw feedstocks necessary to supply the U.S. defense industrial base, particularly for vital metals, including those used in manufacturing rare earth magnets. But while recycling end-of-life rare earth materials eliminates the radioactive thorium issue and is an important step in the right direction, it does not solve the issue of midstream manufacture of permanent high performance magnet production.

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. (NASDAQ: EMAT) is commercially producing rare earth magnets, including from non-Chinese feedstock and recycled magnets. As David Wilcox, the executive chairman, explained “Our company is not a mining company, and it is not in the business of processing monazite - the radioactive rock. The mining business is a very different business than our business.”

While EM&T’s operating subsidiaries have produced bonded magnets for over 18 years, sintered production was added in 2024, with first sintered sales in 2025. In June, 2026, the company’s operating subsidiaries completed quality certification with two global Tier-1 electronics OEMs across six sintered grades, including heavy-rare-earth compositions. In July, 2026 the company took an initial delivery of five metric tons of NdPr metal, a key element in rare earth magnet production, through SRE Vietnam, a Tokai subsidiary, under contract with Senri. That contract is intended to support manufacturing magnets from non-Chinese sources. Those deliveries are expected to scale and continue per the contract with Senri. This procurement dovetails with EM&T’s binding order with the Japanese company ULVAC for an additional 13 sintered magnet machines, scheduled for November 2026 delivery. This additional machinery will allow EM&T to increase its production to 10,000 tons of finished rare earth magnets per year.

Recent News Highlights from Evolution Metals (NASDAQ: EMAT)

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Appoints U.S. Air Force General Thomas A. Bussiere (Ret.) to Board of Directors

Evolution Metals & Technologies Appoints Industry Veteran Kenji Konishi to Lead Rare Earth Magnet Engineering Production

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Receives First Non-China NdPr Metal Shipment for Defense-Compliant Rare Earth Magnet Production, Aligning with New White House Executive Order

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Enters into Supply Contract of Non-China, Critical Rare Earth Metals in its Ongoing Magnet Production Operations

Evolution Metals & Technologies Corp. Validates Commercial-Scale Non-China Rare Earth Magnet Supply Capability Ahead of January 2027 DFARS Defense Sourcing Deadline

Evolution Metals & Technologies Enters into Strategic Equipment Purchase Agreements with ULVAC to Scale Annual Rare Earth Magnet Capacity to 10,000 Tons, Including 6,000 Tons of High-Performance Sintered Magnets

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