Spanish engineering giant Técnicas Reunidas has reached a major milestone in Europe’s race for critical raw materials, in a shift from project development to technology in strategically contested materials sector.

 

The company has successfully produced its first kilograms of neodymium/praseodymium (Nd/Pr) oxide that meet commercial purity and specification standards.

 

The achievement marks a significant step forward in the strategic rare earths sector, with Nd/Pr oxide playing a vital role in permanent magnets used in electric vehicle motors and wind turbines—key technologies driving global decarbonization.

 

The breakthrough was achieved using the company’s proprietary RARETECH technology at its pilot plant in Madrid, demonstrating what the firm describes as both technical viability and industrial promise for scaling rare earth separation and purification.

 

The development is not just a laboratory success. It forms part of the European Union’s PERmanent MAgnet Network for the European Transition (PERMANET), a Horizon Europe–funded initiative led by Técnicas Reunidas to build a fully integrated European supply chain for permanent magnets—from rare earth extraction through to magnet manufacturing.

 

PERMANET brings together 34 partners across 11 countries, aiming to reduce Europe’s dependence on external suppliers for materials critical to the energy transition and digital economy.

 

Técnicas Reunidas is also expanding the reach of its RARETECH platform beyond Europe. The company has recently signed agreements with Australian firms Osmond Resources and St George Mining to apply the technology in rare earth projects in Jaén, Spain, and Araxá, Brazil.

 

Together, these moves position the company as a growing force in the industrialization of rare earth processing technologies.

 

Javier Limpo, Corporate Director of the Proprietary Technology Development Division at Técnicas Reunidas, stated that “these advances significantly reinforce our strategic commitment to the sustainable mining and rare earths sector with technologies that contribute to global decarbonization, as well as its position as a leading engineering and technology partner for scaling these processes to an industrial level.”