REAlloys, which is in the process of merging with Blackboxstocks Inc. (NASDAQ: BLBX), has moved to the front of the rare earth sector with a new agreement that gives it control over the lion’s share of North America’s upcoming heavy rare earth production.
Its partnership with the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) brings commercial volumes of dysprosium, terbium, and high-purity NdPr into the region for the first time, directly targeting the largest bottleneck in Western magnet manufacturing.
Reuters described the transaction as a “rare earths tie-up with strategic implications for the North American supply chain” because policymakers have their eyes glued to this space in light of 2027 procurement rules.
As new U.S. sourcing laws tighten, REAlloys now holds the supply position that downstream defense and advanced-manufacturing buyers will depend on, the Globe & Mail heralding the SRC facility as “North America’s first vertically integrated rare-earth processing complex–capable of separation and smelting at commercial scale”.
This is the segment of the supply chain the United States has been trying to rebuild for nearly two decades.
Heavy rare earths are the performance elements. They dictate whether a magnet can withstand heat, acceleration, and EMI without losing stability. These are all capabilities that extend far beyond defense. They are central to electric-vehicle motors, high-efficiency industrial equipment, medical imaging, renewable-energy generation, satellites, aerospace controls, and precision manufacturing. In short, they sit at the core of technologies that underpin both modern economies and military readiness.
And until now, North America has had no commercial-scale ability to refine them.
A Midstream Capability the Region Has Never Had
SRC’s facility in Saskatoon is North America’s first rare-earth complex designed to integrate monazite processing, separation, and metal production at a commercial scale. That’s a capability the region has lacked for decades.
The new agreement with REAlloys accelerates that evolution by adding a full heavy rare earth line, transforming the site from an advanced separation plant into the continent’s only integrated source of dysprosium, terbium, and high-purity NdPr metals.
Under the partnership, REAlloys will invest approximately $21 million to expand SRC’s refining capacity, increasing heavy rare earth throughput by roughly 300% and boosting NdPr metal output by about 50%.
When the upgraded system enters production in early 2027, SRC expects to deliver 30 tonnes of dysprosium oxide, 15 tonnes of terbium oxide, and 400-600 tonnes of high-purity NdPr metal annually.
REAlloys has secured 80% of this expanded output under a long-term offtake arrangement, a position that gives the company the dominant share of the first commercial heavy rare earth production run in North America.
According to the announcement, the redesigned system will also include “AI-driven separation and smelting infrastructure,” enabling SRC to move directly into metal production rather than stopping at oxide, a step most Western facilities historically have been unable to achieve.
This changes where REAlloys sits in the market. It is no longer a magnet manufacturer with upstream ambitions. Instead, it’s the principal customer of the only heavy rare earth refining platform in the region, and one of the few companies globally positioned to supply high-performance magnet metals into compliant supply chains.
The timing is highly strategic.
Beginning January 1, 2027, the U.S. Department of Defense will be barred from sourcing rare earth metals, magnets, and components from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. Federal buyers will shift procurement to domestic or allied suppliers. And for heavy rare earth metals, SRC’s upgraded facility–with REAlloys as its primary offtake partner–will be the only operation ready to meet that requirement at commercial scale.
Integrating the Chain From Source to Magnet
This agreement fits into a larger structure REAlloys has been putting in place across the rare-earth chain.
At the upstream level, the company anchors its plans in Hoidas Lake in Saskatchewan, a deposit with roughly 2.15 million tonnes of measured and indicated TREO and one of Canada’s most significant rare-earth resources. It gives REAlloys a defined long-term feedstock, supported by additional allied and recycled material sources that broaden the supply base.
The midstream is defined by the Saskatchewan Research Council’s separation and metal-making operation, now being expanded with AI-driven separation and smelting systems to create North America’s first commercial-scale heavy rare earth production line. Under the new agreement, REAlloys becomes the primary offtake partner for this upgraded capacity, securing 80% of the heavy rare earth output and effectively linking its upstream resource base to a domestic refining platform capable of producing dysprosium, terbium, and high-purity NdPr metals at meaningful scale.
Downstream, the Euclid Magnet Facility in Ohio forms the final step in the chain. Established in 2013 to serve U.S. Department of Defense and Department of Energy customers, the facility produces advanced alloys and magnet materials, holds SBIR status that permits sole-source federal procurement, and has earned multiple R&D 100 awards and associated materials-science distinctions. Together, these assets give REAlloys something Western operators have struggled to assemble: a vertically aligned system that spans ore, metals, alloys, and magnets inside a single continental corridor.
Adding to this structure is a clear signal from Washington.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank issued a $200 million Letter of Interest in support of REAlloys’ integrated mine-to-magnet strategy, underscoring federal recognition of the need for a domestic magnet industry as procurement rules tighten.
Piece by piece, the company has begun to build the architecture of a supply chain that has been missing from North America for decades and is now central to reindustrialization efforts on both sides of the border.
A Shift in Market Dynamics
Demand for high-performance magnets continues to accelerate across defense, electric mobility, automation, satellites, and clean energy. Still, the bottleneck has always been the same. Even when Western miners produced rare earth concentrate, they still depended on China for metal-making and heavy rare earth preparation.
That pressure point is now tightening under new procurement rules. Beginning January 1, 2027, the U.S. Department of Defense will be barred from sourcing rare earth metals, magnets, and components from China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
This shift forces federal buyers to transition toward domestic or allied supply. Most manufacturers are not ready for that deadline.
REAlloys, through its partnership with SRC, is now one of the only groups positioned to supply dysprosium, terbium, and NdPr metals at the volumes required by the U.S. and Canadian industrial base.
Heavy rare earths remain the least substitutable inputs in magnet production. They determine stability under heat, acceleration, magnetic load, and environmental stress–all the things that define missile guidance accuracy, aircraft efficiency, EV motor durability, satellite maneuvering, and industrial automation reliability. For nearly 15 years, every Western supply chain assessment has identified heavy rare earths as the system’s most acute vulnerability.
With this agreement, that vulnerability lessens. REAlloys and SRC are establishing the first commercially scaled heavy rare earth production line in North America, and for the first time, a significant portion of that output is contracted directly to a domestic magnet producer.
Execution Will Define the Next Step
North America’s rare earth problem has never been about geology. It has always been the absence of a functioning midstream, the refining and metal-making steps that turn mined material into usable inputs. This gap has forced the United States and Canada to depend on offshore supply even when domestic or allied resources were available.
Heavy rare earths have been the hardest of all to source, leaving defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing exposed to single-country dependence for the materials that determine thermal stability, precision, and performance.
SRC’s expansion arrives as North America finally confronts the part of the rare earth chain it never built: the part rare earths are converted into usable critical materials. Beginning in 2027, U.S. defense buyers must shift away from Chinese supply, but the region has had no commercial-scale source of dysprosium, terbium, or NdPr metals, prompting Reuters to note that the SRC upgrade is the first step toward filling that gap.
The REAlloys agreement doesn’t close the loop, but it does create the first steady flow of heavy rare earth metals inside the U.S.-Canada system. For defense, auto manufacturing, and advanced industrial applications, it marks a shift from theoretical supply to material that can be contracted, scheduled, and built into production plans.
What happens next depends on execution. If SRC delivers its upgraded capacity on schedule and if downstream buyers adapt to the new procurement landscape, 2027 could mark the first time North America has had a functional heavy rare earth channel of its own. It would not eliminate vulnerability, but it would begin to narrow the exposure that has shaped every rare earth strategy discussion since the early 2000s.
