INDUSTRY FOCUS: MINING

“As we shift away from fossil fuels, we are not moving away from natural resources - we are shifting to using more specialty metals that have never been heard of before - neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, lithium, cobalt etc. We realised we needed to find a way around the challenge of accessing these materials because the way we do it today is very hazardous, toxic, and detrimental to the environment – but we need these materials,” says the CEO.

He adds that the discussion ended up pinpointing sustainability as an overlooked key focus area. If a business could be based around sustainability, with a moral and ethical culture running through its core, then it could potentially catalyse change globally.

Rare earth metals are used in almost all high-end technologies – computers, phones, chips etc. 17 metals make up the classification, and they can be worth around £4000 per kg. But the majority of the supply comes from China.

//From a global innovation city behind so many modern startups, Cambridge Massachusetts-founded Phoenix Tailings is growing quickly as it takes steps on its journey towards being the world’s most sustainable precious metals business. Perhaps it’s the proximity to Harvard University or Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or maybe there is something in the water, but from here innovation thrives.

Established in 2019 by an ambitious group of founders, Phoenix Tailings is scaling fast. Core services include the production of rare earth metals from mining waste. It’s a treasure from trash story, and CEO Nicholas Myers tells Energy Focus that it has been tough ride. Sticking to the mission has been essential in a fluid startup environment as the business has journeyed through innovation and funding rounds, desperate to get its pioneering ideas out of the ground.

“It was a personal challenge – I was competing against people twice my age with twice the experience and I had to be better and more knowledgeable – that is tough, double the work in half the time,” he says.

A physics graduate of the University of Vermont, and a MBA holder from Northeastern, this busy US entrepreneur is no stranger to the startup world. He worked in manufacturing for 10 years before switching focus to finance. In the banking space, he realised his passion was for young, agile businesses with fresh ideas, but to achieve his own goal of significant impact, he knew he must start his own business to tackle a long-standing issue.

“Things have gone well, we have a lot to do yet, but it has been successful so far,” he smiles.

New Idea Needed

A chance meeting with his Cofounder, Dr Thomas Villalón, led to the discussion around what Myers calls ‘the big problems in the world today’.

“We said instead of destroying a new mountainside or community to access the materials, harvesting them in a toxic way, we should go after the waste that our ancestors already produced and harvest that – cleaning that up while creating raw materials from that waste. It’s sitting there, we just need to process it in the right way,” says Myers.

Taking the waste from mining or quarrying operations – often dumped in landfill, labelled tailings ponds - and refining to extract valuable mineral deposits left behind after traditional processing is where the company is built strong. These materials are often rare earth minerals used across multiple consumer and industrial applications.

Some estimates suggest that mining produces 84 billion tons of hazardous waste material annually, with land, water, and air all included in the fallout.

Myers, Thomas Villalón (CTO), Michelle Chao (COO), and Anthony Balladon (VP Partnerships) Co-founded the business, building the first prototype in a backyard in Cambridge, Massachusetts with help of the University of Connecticut’s Wolff New

Venture competition which Phoenix Tailings won a $20,000 prize fund to invest in proprietary technology.

“Initially, we were processing bauxite residue as a by-product from alumina production, pulling out a little bit of iron and other rare earth metals that are needed to power wind energy and electric vehicles. We moved away from bauxite residue, although we do still work with some bauxite tailings, and we now focus on iron ore, nickel, copper, and other tailings. Our mission is to be the world’s first fully clean metals and mining company, with zero waste, zero carbon emissions, entirely sustainable all the way through.”

The popularity of this idea, and the culture developed by the leadership team was clearly appealing to investors. Funding from the National Science Foundation helped Phoenix Tailings to expand to aa point where it could talk to corporate clients and understand their needs. A capital raise through pre-seed investment firm Techstars in 2020 helped achieve further scale.

Sold Out

In January, the company officially announced the start of commercial scale refining of critical rare earth metals – a first for the USA. Product viability was proven through the pilot stage and world-class R&D is helping to meet growing demand.

“At Phoenix Tailings, we are solving this critical gap with our technology in order to reduce America’s dependence on foreign governments. That’s one of the reasons we are so excited about the commercial production capacity at our facility,” says Myers.

Demonstrating the hunger in the market, he highlights that the company had sold its entire 2023 neodymium