Hertha Metals announced Tuesday the close of a $133.65M Series A round, including a $65M equity investment from the US Government, executed through its Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program in partnership with the Economic Defense Unit.
The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Doerr Capital, with participation from CEV, Pear Ventures, Gates Frontier, Niterra SUISO no MORI Fund, Toyota Ventures and Siemens Financial Services.
The funding will finance the construction of Hertha Chalyx, the company’s new facility that plans to produce 10,000 tonnes of steel-grade and magnet-grade high-purity iron.
The company is developing what it calls FLEXHERS, short for flexible fuel hydrogen electric reduction smelting, a process that combines electric arc furnace technology with natural gas or hydrogen to produce iron and steel.
Chalyx, alongside Hertha’s pilot plant, Pi100, will be the first modern iron and steel innovation complex, a significant step toward reshoring iron and steel production central to IBAS’s industrial base mission, the company said.
The United States currently imports almost all of the high-purity iron used in rare-earth permanent magnets. NdFeB magnets are made of roughly 70% high-purity iron by weight, yet the US has no domestic production capacity for this essential material.
As the U.S.-made magnet push grows with the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), Hertha Chalyx is establishing domestic production of the high-purity iron that rare-earth magnets need, creating a supply chain that spans mining to manufacturing entirely on American soil, the company said.
The FLEXHERS process replaces the multi-step, coal-dependent blast furnace method with a single continuous reactor that processes any grade of iron ore and uses natural gas or hydrogen as a reductant, the company said, adding that the result is iron and steel at 25% lower production costs than conventional blast furnaces, with emissions reductions of 50% using natural gas and up to 98% using hydrogen.
“Every electric vehicle, aerospace platform, radar system, and data center depends on domestic iron and magnet feedstock suppliers,” Hertha Metals CEO Laureen Meroueh said in a news release. “Hertha Chalyx closes that gap. We are building the supply chain this country needs, and we are doing it by providing a domestic cost-competitive option for manufacturers while unlocking safer and cleaner production.”
“Hertha has cracked what the steel industry has chased for many decades: iron and steel in one step, below blast-furnace cost, and made in America. That’s the missing link for every magnet, EV, data center, and defense platform this country builds,” Khosla Ventures partner Rajesh Swaminathan said.
Hertha currently operates a 360-ton-per-year demonstration facility in Conroe, Texas, and is in the active supplier qualification process with major U.S. rare-earth magnet producers. When Hertha Chalyx breaks ground this year, these integrated facilities producing both steel and high-purity iron on a single site will give U.S. magnet and defense manufacturers a source they lack, the company said.
Source: https://www.mining.com/texas-startup-raises-133m-to-build-rare-earth-magnet-grade-iron-plant/
