A $375 million rare earth processing plant is headed for Rochester's Eastman Business Park, with Phoenix Tailings planning to turn mining waste and recycled electronics into materials used in electric vehicles and fighter jets. The 500,000-square-foot facility is expected to begin some operations in 2027 and reach full production in 2028, processing about 18,000 tons of rare earth material each year, according to a state statement.
The project, which Phoenix Tailings is calling Freedom Separation, will create at least 90 launch jobs and more than 200 direct New York jobs once it reaches full production, according to GlobeNewswire. The Rochester site is part of a broader Phoenix Tailings platform the company says will support more than 500 jobs across New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the facility will help strengthen national security and establish a clean rare-earth supply chain in the state, framing the $375 million investment as a win for the region, as reported by Reuters.
New York State will provide $3 million in performance-based tax credits for the project, per the state's statement cited by Reuters. The facility serves as the separation plant for Phoenix Tailings' Freedom Project, a more than $1.2 billion effort designed to produce over 4,400 tons per year of separated rare earth oxides pulled from mined and recycled feedstocks, the GlobeNewswire release notes.
Pentagon Loan Anchors the Build
The project rests on a conditional $500 million long-term debt financing commitment from the Pentagon to Phoenix Tailings, which Reuters reports the company will use to build a rare earth midstream processing plant in the United States. That commitment, announced through the Department of War's Office of Strategic Capital, serves as anchor funding for an estimated $1 billion initiative to scale domestic midstream processing, according to Manufacturing Dive. The Office of Strategic Capital was created by the Department of Defense in 2022 to pull in private capital for critical military supply chains.
Phoenix Tailings CEO Nick Myers said America and its allies need control of rare earth supply chains in order to build advanced manufacturing, a point echoed in the broader federal push behind the Rochester project. The United States is investing billions of dollars in new rare earth plants to cut into China's influence over mineral supplies, and most new domestic processing capacity isn't expected online until 2027 or later, per Reuters.
Why the Supply Chain Gap Matters
China controls roughly 60% of global rare earth mining output and about 91% of worldwide refining and separation capacity, according to International Energy Agency data cited by AZoMining. That imbalance is why the midstream separation stage Phoenix Tailings is building in Rochester matters: the project is designed to produce separated rare-earth oxides, while rare earths are used in magnets and defense applications.
Critical metals trader Traxys North America signed a strategic partnership and made an equity investment in Phoenix Tailings to manage global feedstock sourcing and commercial distribution of separated elements including samarium, yttrium, dysprosium and terbium, according to Traxys. That commercial backbone is meant to ensure the separated material actually reaches manufacturers once it leaves Rochester.
A Company Built on MIT Roots
Phoenix Tailings was founded in 2018 as a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinout and developed a proprietary electrochemical refining process designed to extract and separate rare earth metals from mining waste without toxic acid chemicals or direct carbon emissions, according to Resourcing Tomorrow. Before landing federal loan commitments, the company secured more than $2 million in Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy grants from the U.S. Department of Energy to accelerate its zero-carbon extraction technology, per Energies Media.
Before selecting Rochester, Phoenix Tailings had already built a 200-ton-per-year rare earth separation demonstration plant in Exeter, New Hampshire, and ran a feedstock pilot program at the historic Barton Hill iron mine in Moriah, New York, the same Resourcing Tomorrow report notes.
Phoenix Tailings' Rochester Facility
Eastman Business Park is the planned site of Phoenix Tailings' facility.
Eastman Business Park has industrial infrastructure required by Phoenix Tailings' process, and the company plans to build its facility there.
