SICAPERMA

About SICAPERMA

SICAPERMA offers the first specialisation area where Less Developed Regions can become the leaders in EU Resilience, digital and ecological transitions: Nd-Fe-B Recycling Technologies

SICAPERMA will build a tech-based value chain that does currently not exist in Europe and will do so by tapping into less developed regions’ uncovered tech capabilities. These will be connected for the first time into a full interregional EU demonstration ecosystem that will commercialize and deploy innovative recycled PM and underlying tech at high-end material market volume by M30.

Permanent Magnet Recycling.

It is the First Tech Area critical to leading EU value chains where Less Developed and Transition Regions can become Leaders. SICAPERMA will build a tech-based value chain that does currently not exist in Europe and will do so by tapping into less developed regions’ uncovered tech capabilities. These will be connected for the first time into a full interregional EU demonstration ecosystem that will commercialize and deploy innovative recycled PM and underlying tech at high-end material market volume by M30.

Today, China provides for 98% of EU demand in REE magnets4 and even provides 100% of EU supply of heavy REE while Turkey provides 99% of our Boron

"The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, IEA, Paris 2021."

*Source: iea.org

PM: a critical area to Digital and Green Transitions

Permanent Magnets (PM) gained unprecedented visibility within the past 5 years in conjunction with several trends – when the booming electrification meets COVID, Microchip and Ukrainian crises. PM consist of hard materials that produce a persistent and constant magnetic field (force that can move other ferromagnetic materials). The best performing PM are made of Rare Earth Elements (REE) and are strategic as they are essential to a wide range of applications – from electronics (mobile phones, cameras, or computer drives) to wind turbines or Electric Vehicles (EV). REE comprise the so called “light” REE Nd (Neodymium), Pr (Praseodymium), Sm (Samarium), as well as minor “heavy” REE such as Tb (Terbium) as well as Dy (Dysprosium). REE PM are a c ritical input to over 200 different commercial product groups1 and PM themselves are the primary user group for rare earth metal elements.

"Vasileios Rizos, Edoardo Righetti, Amin Kassab (2022). CEPS In-Depth Analysis: Developing A Supply Chain For Recycled Rare Earth Permanent Magnets In The Eu. Challenges and opportunities. INSPIRE December, 2022 - 07"

*Source: ceps.eu

Meet the team behind this project

SICAPERMA brings together 14 partners from 7 European countries led by the Universidad de Jaén. Our partnership covers the entire recycling process, connecting supply and demand while integrating the essential technological capabilities to drive innovations forward.

Learn more about us

SICAPERMA Project Video

Sustainable Innovation investment Catapult for Permanent Magnets

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.