Queen’s professor-turned-CEO Ahmad Ghahreman is scaling up his clean technology start-up Cyclic Materials while enlisting former students.
“Go tell students to study hard,” co-founder Patrick William Nee joked during a media tour, referencing how Ghahreman hired some of his best former students at Queen’s.
The Kingston-based company is the first to create a true circular supply chain for rare earth elements—the critical minerals in permanent magnets. These magnets power all sorts of products, from electric vehicles (EV), to vacuum cleaners and hard disk drives.
At its pilot plant “spoke” facility, Cyclic proved it could extract magnets and metals from products like MRI machines and wind turbines. They plan to open a commercial “hub” facility in the Spring, which will take magnet scraps and convert them back into rare earth elements.
“The sheer number of products we use in our life that consume […] magnets, is just a gigantic list,” Ghahreman said during a tour of the spoke facility.
Ghahreman heralds Kingston as the “centre of the universe” for critical mineral recycling, touting the City’s proximity to major cities, local talent, and major research players like Kingston Process Metallurgy (KPM).
The City gained international recognition for its critical mineral recycling capabilities when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited last March.
READ MORE: Prime Minister Trudeau and President of European Commission stop in Kingston
The co-founders credit Queen’s University for a steady inflow of talent, with multiple graduates and current students on the team. Cyclic’s Vice-President of Engineering and Technology Alex Forstner, Sci ’07, is a Queen’s alumnus.
“[Queen’s] has a lot of great past students out there who haven’t ed us at Cyclic [yet],” Ghahreman said, adding that the company plans to hire more students and is currently recruiting through the school’s undergraduate internship program (QUIP).
Ghahreman’s former student Matt Hepburn, Sci ’16, is currently a Manager of Process Engineering at Cyclic. Hepburn told The Journal he’s proud to be a part of a company recycling metals and contributing to the clean energy transition.
“While I recognize the importance of safe and sustainable mining practices, recycling metals holds many advantages over mining them,” Hepburn said in a statement. “Recycling helps create a circular, domestic, and secure supply chain for materials that are critical to the clean energy transition.”
Cyclic has grown quickly, identifying that critical minerals are in short supply as EV demand revs up. The market value of rare earth elements in magnets is projected to triple in value—from $15.1 billion USD in 2022 to $46.2 billion USD by 2035.
Western nations are looking to curb their reliance on China, which is currently responsible for producing 95 per cent of magnets, according to Ghahreman.
“From day one [we intended to] not use any Chinese technology in our plant,” he said. “At no stage in our technology development, implementation, and commercial scale, we will be at the mercy of [China].”
Cyclic signed a memorandum of understanding to work with major EV automaker Polestar in 2022, to help them find non-Chinese magnet suppliers, tackle supply-chain challenges, and create a circular recycling pathway, according to Nee.
“We’ll be working both directly with Polestar, but with their magnet suppliers, to get those materials back into magnets to go to their motors,” Nee said.
Many hybrid cars use magnets in their motors, according to the co-founders, so demand for magnets in the auto industry is diversified.
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