Técnicas Reunidas S.A. (TR; Madrid, Spain) has been selected as the leading company for the PERMANET Project (PERmanent MAgnet Network for the European Transition) promoted by the European Commission (EC) within the framework of its Horizon Program.
The main goal of the project is to create the first complete European value chain for the production of permanent magnets and increase the EU’s annual permanent-magnet production capacity twenty-fold by 2050. The project involves 34 partners (17 large companies, seven SMEs, four research centers, two universities and four clusters from eleven European countries). Its budget reaches around 21 million euros, with a grant of around 16 million. It is estimated to last 40 months.
Manufacturing permanent magnets requires technologies for the production of rare earths, an area in which Técnicas Reunidas has extensive experience, as well as technological solutions that it already supplies to the market.
An aim of this project is to increase the EU’s annual permanent magnet production capacity twenty-fold by 2050 (Source: Técnicas Reunidas)
This chain will include the extraction, processing and refining of rare earths —which are the basis for the production of permanent magnets — the manufacture of the magnets, and their recycling.
Técnicas Reunidas, besides leading the project, will address in its Technology Center the development of the technology that will allow the production of rare earths from minerals and secondary sources for manufacturing permanent magnets.
The company has proven experience in this field, as it already supplies the market with its own technology, RARETECH, which allows obtaining rare earth concentrates in the form of carbonates from ores.
PERMANET is of high strategic value, since permanent magnets are a key material for manufacturing more than 200 product groups that are essential for digital development and energy transition, in particular motors for electric vehicles, wind generators and transformers.
In addition, they are also subject to high geopolitical risk. At present, EU production of permanent magnets is extremely low, barely reaching 1,000 tons per year, and is not expected to cover more than 20% of European needs by 2030. Rising this capacity would require a sharp increase in imports of rare earths from China, the world’s leading producer, which currently supplies almost all of the EU’s demand for these materials.
This over-dependence on China may become even more serious in the next future, due to the growing demand for permanent magnets to drive the electrification required by the energy transition and the recent decision by the Chinese authorities to restrict the export of rare earth processing technologies.
As a result, the European Commission has passed a Key Raw Materials Act last year, and has also established its regulation on last March, “as the demand for rare earths is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years.”
PERMANET is part of this effort to overcome the European limited production capacity and the weak development of certain segments that currently affect the EU’s permanent magnet production value chain.
Its aim is to achieve that the European production of permanent magnets reaches 2,800 tons per year in 2037, 7,800 tons in 2040 and 21,600 tons in 2050. That would cover almost 50% of the EU’s needs in that year.
Javier Limpo, Director of Técnicas Reunidas’ Proprietary Technology Development Division, has pointed out that “this project, which is essential to promote European independence in the field of energy transition, will strengthen the position of our company as a technological reference in the extraction and recovery of rare earths”.