New sintered magnets from end-of-life magnets.

HydroMagnets is established to operate a short-loop process. End-of-life magnets are not dissolved and re-separated element by element. The NdFeB alloy is preserved, broken down by hydrogen, and re-sintered into new magnets.

The short loop avoids primary mining, chemical separation and rare-earth metal production entirely. The output is a finished magnet to specification rather than an intermediate chemical product.

The alloy is the product of a manufacturing chain that has already taken place. Mining, separation, metal production and alloying were done once, and the short loop keeps that work rather than undoing it.

The feedstock is European. Permanent magnets are recovered from end-of-life equipment across Europe. Material already placed on the European market is a source that requires no new mining and no import.

Material is tracked by batch, from the equipment it was recovered from to the magnet it becomes. The Critical Raw Materials Act will require producers to declare how much of the neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium in a magnet was recovered from post-consumer waste. That declaration depends on records kept from the start.

Berlevåg is a fishing and maritime municipality on the Barents Sea coast of Finnmark. The town has a recently extended industrial harbour, its own airport, available industrial land near the quay, and a workforce with maritime and technical trades.

The location was chosen for three reasons: direct access to some of the most productive onshore wind resources in Europe, a deep-water harbour for inbound scrap and outbound product, and a regional power surplus.

Raggovidda produced 405 GWh in a year from 96.6 MW of installed capacity — a capacity factor close to 48 %, roughly twice the European average for onshore wind. The harbour has recently been extended and the town retains scheduled air connections: infrastructure here is being added to rather than wound down.

Coordinates

70.86° N, 29.09° E

Harbour

Sheltered deep-water harbour behind two breakwaters, recently extended; quay capacity for bulk and project cargo

Power

Raggovidda wind farm — 96.6 MW installed, 405 GWh per year — on the plateau approximately 10 km south of the town

Air

Berlevåg airport, with scheduled regional connections

Road

County road connection to the E6

Berlevåg has more renewable electricity than the grid can carry away. Varanger Kraft holds a 200 MW concession at Raggovidda, but transmission capacity out of the Varanger peninsula has been limited to 95 MW. Hydrogen was introduced as a way of storing energy generated when the wind blows and the grid is full.

The hydrogen plant in Berlevåg is a 2.5 MW PEM electrolyser with a production capacity of one tonne of hydrogen per day. It has been in operation since 2020 and was built under Haeolus, an EU Horizon 2020 project under the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking, coordinated by SINTEF. The project demonstrated hydrogen production from wind power at a remote northern site with constrained grid access.

Hydrogen is produced by electrolysis of water using renewable wind electricity. The feedstock is water and the by-product is oxygen.

For HydroMagnets the hydrogen is a process gas. It is consumed in the reaction that breaks down the magnet alloy, and is removed before the material is consolidated. The heat for sintering comes from renewable electricity.

HydroMagnets AS is currently exploring the opportunity to develop a production site in Berlevåg and to become part of Berlevåg Industripark.

No decision has been taken to establish a factory. The development follows four stages, and each must be completed successfully before the next is committed.

A magnet plant is a process industry. The work it requires is year-round rather than seasonal, and skilled: process operators, laboratory technicians, mechanical and electrical maintenance, quality measurement and logistics. The greater Varanger region, and Vestre Varanger in particular — Berlevåg, Båtsfjord, Nesseby and Tana — has a workforce with maritime, fisheries and technical trades. Much of that competence transfers to process operation, gas and vacuum systems and precision maintenance. A plant in Berlevåg would draw on labour, suppliers and services from across the region rather than from one municipality alone.

Other competence would have to be built here. Magnet metallurgy, powder handling and magnetic measurement are not trades that exist in the region today, and establishing them locally rather than importing them is one of the things the staged development is intended to test — together with use of the harbour, the industrial park and regional suppliers. In an economy that is largely seasonal, year-round industrial employment would broaden the base rather than replace it.