USA Rare Earth is putting $1.2 billion into a rare earth metal and permanent magnet plant at Bailey Industrial Park in Blacksburg, South Carolina. The company announced the Cherokee County site on June 2, 2026. Site preparation is expected to follow later in the year, with the plant online in April 2028 and roughly 490 jobs at full staffing.
Project Scope
The facility pairs two production steps that almost never sit under one roof in the United States. One line produces about 5,000 metric tons a year of strip-cast rare earth metal and alloy. The other turns out roughly 6,400 metric tons a year of sintered neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets. Combined with the company’s existing Stillwater, Oklahoma operation, the stated target is 10,000 metric tons a year of domestic magnets and metals. No general contractor or design team had been named publicly as of mid-July 2026.
Why It Matters
Sintered NdFeB magnets go into EV traction motors, wind turbine generators, defense systems and industrial robotics, and China controls the overwhelming majority of global production. The metal and alloy step in front of magnet making is the part the U.S. has almost none of, so co-locating it here is the point rather than a detail. The financing tells its own story: a federal package of up to $1.6 billion, made up of $277 million in grants and $1.3 billion in senior secured loans, sits behind a $1.2 billion capital plan. For contractors, this is a heavy process build with furnaces, strip casters, sintering presses and tight atmospheric control, closer to a specialty metals plant than a warehouse.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | USA Rare Earth, Inc. |
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| Owner / Client | USA Rare Earth, Inc. |
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| Status | Planned |
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| Funding Source | Mixed |
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