Jub Capital Management LLP

🧲 THE US MAGNET STACK: 8 REPORTED PRODUCERS, A DOZEN QUIET ONES, AND A DEMAND QUESTION NOBODY'S ANSWERED The US is racing to reshore its mine-to-magnet supply chain after decades of near-total dependence on China. ⏰ WHY THE RUSH: From Jan 1, 2027, DFARS 252.225-7052 bans the DoD from buying weapons systems with ANY Chinese-origin material anywhere in the NdFeB supply chain — mining to magnet. That's the real deadline driving every timeline above, not just "reshoring" ambition. 🪖 THE STOCKPILE RISK: Some reports suggest the US strategic rare earth reserve could run dry in as little as 2 months under serious disruption — dysprosium and terbium (missile guidance, radar, stealth) are the most exposed, with China holding ~98-99% of global heavy rare earth supply. 🤖 THE WILDCARD DEMAND SOURCE: Humanoid robots use dozens of NdFeB magnets per unit for joint actuators. Bain projects 6M units/year globally by 2035. Could this absorb the US oversupply? Maybe — but right now almost all of that build-out is happening in China. 💰 Backed by billions in DoD, DoC, and CHIPS Act money, the goal is simple: build a sovereign NdFeB and SmCo magnet base for defense, EVs, and industrial motors. ⛏️-🧲But there's a widening gap between what's announced and what's actually running — THE TOP 8 (BY NAMEPLATE TARGET) 🥇 e-VAC Magnetics (Sumter, SC) — 12,000 tpa target, ~2,000 tpa (17%) built, Pentagon-financed NdFeB + SmCo 🥈 Noveon Magnetics (San Marcos, TX) — 10,000 tpa target, ~2,000 tpa (20%) built, e-scrap recycling loop 🥉 MP Materials ("10X Facility") — 10,000 tpa target, ~1,000 tpa (10%) built, DoD partnership, SOP 2028 4️⃣ USA Rare Earth (Stillwater OK + Blacksburg SC) — 10,000 tpa target, ~600 tpa (6%) built, $1.6B CHIPS/DoC-backed, feeding off 40,000 t/day Round Top feedstock target. 5️⃣ Vulcan Elements (Benson, NC) — 10,000 tpa target, pilot scale only, construction phase 6️⃣ AML Magnetics (Melbourne, FL) — 10,000 tpa target by 2028, ~200 tpa producing now, DoD/DLA-aligned 7️⃣ HyProMag USA (Denton County, TX) — 4,656 tpa target, HPMS recycling, still in planning 8️⃣ JS-Link America (Columbus, GA) — 3,000 tpa target by 2028, Korea-linked pilot line, planning stage 📉 THE GAP: ~5,600–6,000 tpa is genuinely online today. ~40,000+ tpa is funded or near-term. Most of that lands 2028–2030, not tomorrow. 🧲The Magnet Supply Chain Nobody Talks About-Until It Breaks, Warns American Magnetics Expert John Ormerod👇 rareearthexchanges.com/news/… THE OTHER TIER — QUIETER BUT REAL 🛡️ Arnold Magnetic Technologies (Rochester, NY) — 130+ year incumbent, ITAR & DFARS-compliant sintered NdFeB + SmCo, targeting full DFARS 252.225-7052 compliance by mid-2026 ahead of the Jan 2027 deadline that locks Chinese-origin material out of DoD supply chains entirely. 👇 arnoldmagnetics.com/blog/arn… 🚀 Permag (Lancaster, PA / Elk Grove Village, IL) — the only vertically integrated US-based SmCo producer via its Electron Energy Corp brand, doubling SmCo output for radar, missile guidance, and satellite actuators. 👇 permag.com/leaders-in-rare-e… 🎯 TDA Magnetics — backed by DoD and a $2.3M MCEIP award, supplying qualified custom magnets directly into DoD supply chains as part of the Pentagon's own "mine-to-magnet" push. 👇 tdamagnetics.com Most private US magnet makers stay deliberately quiet — no press releases, no investor decks, just DoD contracts and NDAs. The real domestic base is almost certainly wider than any public list captures. ⛏️The Five Chains Are Consolidating Into Two🧲 🔗 THE CONSOLIDATION NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT The "five separate mine-to-magnet chains" story is already outdated. Two of them just merged into vertically-integrated giants: ⚡ Energy Fuels — now the first fully integrated Western mine-to-magnet platform. 🇺🇸⛏️-🧲Energy Fuels agreed to acquire Vacuumschmelze (VAC) for ~$1.9B in a cash-and-stock deal on June 23, 2026, expected to close early 2027. Combined with its earlier move on Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) for metals/alloys, Energy Fuels now controls every link in one chain: monazite mining (Donald Project, Australia) → separation (White Mesa Mill, Utah, up to 6,000 tpa NdPr) → metals/alloys (Korea + planned US via ASM) → finished magnets (VAC's Sumter, SC plant, 2,000 tpa now, expandable to 12,000 tpa). This single deal absorbs what were previously three "separate" boxes in the old chain matrix — Energy Fuels, ASM, and VAC — into one company. 🇺🇸 USA Rare Earth — closed its own end-to-end play via LCM ⛏️-🧲USA Rare Earth completed its acquisition of Less Common Metals (LCM), the UK's leading ex-China rare earth metal and alloy producer, in November 2025. This closes the "metals" gap that used to force USARE to rely on outside metallisation — LCM now feeds NdFeB and SmCo alloy directly into USARE's Stillwater, OK magnet line, and separately supplies Arnold Magnetic Technologies too. LCM calls itself "the only company with a true mine-to-magnet offering in the West" outside of the Energy Fuels. 🇺🇸 ⛏️-🧲MP Materials remains the only fully self-contained single-company chain (mine → refine → metal → magnet, all in-house). Energy Fuels has now built the same thing through acquisition rather than in-house build, folding ASM, VAC and Noveon-adjacent capacity under one roof. USA Rare Earth did the same via LCM. The "five separate chains" framing is really down to two vertically-integrated platforms (MP Materials, Energy Fuels/VAC/ASM) plus USARE/LCM as a third — with Noveon and Vulcan increasingly looking like independent downstream customers of Energy Fuels' metal supply rather than standalone chains. THE DEMAND QUESTION Argus Media pegs 2030 US magnet demand at ~12,000 tonnes. Announced capacity could exceed 40,000 tonnes by then. 🏷️ #RareEarths #CriticalMinerals #Magnets #NdFeB #SupplyChainSecurity #Reshoring #DefenseIndustrialBase #MPMaterials #USARareEarth #Noveon #Vulcan #HyProMag #AMLMagnetics #JSLink #ArnoldMagnetics #Permag #TDAMagnetics #ChinaDecoupling #EconomicSecurity #JSLink #HyProMagUSA #eVAC @MPMaterials @Energy_Fuels @USARareEarth @VulcanElements @AMLInnovation @noveonmagnetics