RE: IONIC TECHNOLOGIES SECURES UK GOVERNMENT BACKING WITH £11M “CirculaREEconomy” PARTNERSHIP14 Jul 2025 22:59
This has been discussed on this board before. Ionic is a different and earlier stage business to ours. They only have a demonstration plant in Belfast (I think an Aussie company Ionic bought the Belfast start up company which was a spin out of Queens University, hence the ASX listing) and are a couple of years away from a commercial plant the last time I looked. They are certainly not first of a kind in terms of rare earth magnet supply chain in the UK, that would be us. Their process separates into rare earth oxides, whereas our short loop process is able to recreate magnets without a chemical/reagent process.
Most of our Tyseley plant funding has come from UK government grant programmes and if you read Mkango’s latest corporate presentation you will see the long history of government grants that we have received.
In summary, Ionic have a different and more energy intensive process, that produces a different product, are a few years behind us, and currently without the global reach.