Hertha Metals Chalyx High-Purity Iron Plant, Conroe, Texas

China makes an estimated 94% of the high-purity iron that goes into neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Hertha Metals wants a piece of that back, starting in Conroe. The startup broke ground Oct. 8, 2026, on Hertha Chalyx, a roughly $100 million plant about 40 miles north of Houston that it calls the first U.S. commercial plant for magnet-grade high-purity iron.

Chalyx sits next to Hertha’s headquarters and its Pi100 pilot plant, which keeps running. Together the company is calling the two an iron and steel “innovation complex.”

Project Scope

The plant is designed for about 10,000 metric tons a year of steel-grade and magnet-grade high-purity iron combined. It’ll use Hertha’s single-step process, which feeds iron ore and natural gas into one furnace and pulls out either liquid steel or high-purity iron depending on how the chemistry is controlled. Ore will come mostly from Minnesota’s Iron Range, and gas from Texas. Hertha says the pilot plant has already hit 99.95% purity, the spec major magnet makers require, and it’s in supplier qualification with U.S. magnet producers.

CV Engineering, a Pittsburgh steel-mill specialist, is the engineering, procurement and construction management partner and will lead engineering and construction through completion. Its CEO, Kalyan Sennerikuppam, said the job is to build Hertha’s process “to the standard the steel industry expects of any mill.” CV Engineering says it has handled more than $50 billion in U.S. steel mill work for owners such as Nucor, U.S. Steel and Steel Dynamics.

Hertha expects Chalyx online in late 2027, with magnet-grade production starting in early 2028. The plant will employ about 50 people. Funding comes on the back of a $133.65 million Series A co-led by Khosla Ventures and Doerr Capital that included a $65 million equity investment from the federal government through the Department of War’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program.

Why It Matters

At 10,000 tons a year, Chalyx is small by steel standards. It’s a commercial proof, not a mill. What it’s proving is the claim behind the company: that a one-step furnace can make iron and steel at 25% lower cost than the blast furnace route with about half the emissions on natural gas. Those are Hertha’s numbers, and Chalyx is where they’ll get tested at scale.

If they hold, the next step is much bigger. Hertha says successful operation here sets up its first 500,000-metric-ton-per-year iron and steel mill, and it plans to keep CV Engineering on future plants. For Gulf Coast contractors, a $100 million process plant with federal money behind it is a modest job. A half-million-ton mill wouldn’t be.

Project Team & Details