USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) said on June 2 that it will spend roughly $1.2 billion to build a sintered neodymium iron boron magnet and refined metals operation in the Bailey Industrial Park in Blacksburg, Cherokee County, South Carolina. The plant is sized for 6,400 metric tons of finished NdFeB magnets per year and 5,000 metric tons of heavy rare earth strip cast, metal, and alloy per year. First production is targeted for April 2028. The project is expected to create about 490 jobs.
The announcement is the third US facility on USAR’s stated path from mine to magnet, following the Round Top heavy rare earth deposit in Texas and the Stillwater, Oklahoma magnet manufacturing site. The Cherokee County build adds upstream refining and metal capacity that the existing Stillwater footprint does not contain, and is the first US site explicitly designed to produce heavy rare earth metals and alloys at meaningful scale.
That heavy rare earth piece is the part of the story that matters for the supply chain frame. Sintered NdFeB magnets contain roughly 2 to 8 percent dysprosium or terbium for the high temperature grades used in EV traction motors, defense actuators, and wind turbine direct drive generators. Those heavy elements are concentrated in southern Chinese ionic clay deposits and have historically been refined almost entirely inside China. Beijing’s April 2025 export licensing regime tightened the controls on heavy rare earth oxides and the technology used to process them, and the licenses have continued to act as a binding rather than nominal constraint through 2026.
Two thesis points to flag. First, the marginal capex going into the chain now sits behind US borders and is rated for non-China end markets: USAR, MP Materials’ planned Independence facility, and the South Australian and European projects funded by allied government programs all show the same shape. The capacity is not online yet, but the announced 2027-2028 pipeline is starting to add to a number worth tracking against China’s installed base. Second, the customer mix that USAR is calling out, aerospace, defense, semiconductors, and data centers, is the same mix the rare earth bull case is built on. AI-related capex is showing up as a named end market in rare earth project announcements for the first time at this scale.
Two caveats are also worth flagging. The 2028 first production target is far enough out that capital availability, permitting, and construction execution all remain live risks before any of the announced volume hits the market. And the heavy rare earth recovery flowsheet at commercial scale outside of China has been demonstrated only in pilot to date; the production ramp on dysprosium and terbium in particular is the metric that will either confirm or quietly reset the timeline.
The data point to watch next: USAR’s next quarterly update on Round Top permitting progress and any disclosed offtake or DoD-backed price support attached to the Cherokee County site.
Source: USA Rare Earth press release, June 2, 2026, South Carolina Department of Commerce announcement.