Carester (Caremag)

A private Lyon, France company building the Caremag plant at Lacq to recycle end-of-life NdFeB magnets and separate NdPr, dysprosium and terbium oxides from recycled feed and imported concentrates; it also provides separation engineering to other projects.

Points to check

Facts from the sources on this page that a reader should weigh before relying on the company's own figures.

USA Rare Earth's 10 Aug 2026 earnings release does not report the Carester investment as closed and says it may not be completed on the anticipated timeline or at all.
Public start-of-operations guidance has moved from 'by late 2026' (Mar 2025) to 'targeted to begin in 2027' in Lindian's 3 Sep 2026 ASX release.
The Lindian offtake does not oblige supply or purchase until Lindian's SARECO facility reaches commercial production; the Neo agreement is a binding term sheet with definitive agreements still to be executed.
About 90% of Caremag's heavy rare earth feed is expected to come from mining, mainly outside Europe, for at least the first few years (Mining Technology, May 2025).
Volumes under the USA Rare Earth/LCM Europe right to buy Caremag oxides, and the Neo swarf and oxide volumes, have not been disclosed.

At a glance

Founded: 2019 — Carester was founded in 2019 (February 2019 per Mining Technology) by Frederic Carencotte with a team of former rare earth industry experts. Caremag was created in November 2020 by Carester and its employees; 21 employees are Caremag shareholders.
Headquarters: Lyon, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France (Tour Part-Dieu, 129 rue Servient, 69003 Lyon)
Ownership: Private (French SAS). Caremag is a Carester subsidiary; Japan France Rare Earth Company (a JOGMEC-Iwatani joint venture) committed up to EUR 110M in Caremag equity and shareholder loans (Mar 2025). USA Rare Earth (Nasdaq: USAR) and InfraVia's Critical Metals Fund signed definitive agreements on 23 Jul 2026 to acquire about 13.6% of Carester SAS each, with funding expected in Q3 2026 subject to conditions; no closing announcement was found as of 16 Oct 2026.
Stage: Developing. Investment decision in December 2024 with €216 million of French state and Japanese funding; under construction at Lacq since April 2025, with start-up guided for Q4 2026.
Listing: Private.
Revenue: Not publicly disclosed. This company does not publish revenue and no named third party has published an estimate of it.

Capacity

Each date below links to the document the figure came from. A capacity figure with no source is not on this page.

What	Figure	Status	As of
End-of-life permanent magnets recycled (input), Caremag Lacq	2,000 t/yr (design)	Under construction	Mar 2025
Mining concentrates refined (input), Caremag Lacq	5,000 t/yr (design); USA Rare Earth's April 2026 materials give total feed as 7,000 t/yr (2,000 t magnets + 5,000 t concentrates)	Under construction	Apr 2026
NdPr oxide output (light rare earths), Caremag Lacq	800 t/yr at full ramp (design): 650 t/yr didymium (NdPr) oxide + 150 t/yr Nd oxide, purity >99.5%	Under construction	Jul 2026
Dysprosium oxide output, Caremag Lacq	500 t/yr at full ramp (design), purity >99.95%	Under construction	Jul 2026
Terbium oxide output, Caremag Lacq	90 t/yr (Carester site) to 100 t/yr (USA Rare Earth, Jul 2026) at full ramp (design), purity >99.95%; Dy+Tb combined stated as ~600 t/yr, about 15% of current world production	Under construction	Jul 2026

Narrative

Carester was founded in Lyon in 2019 by Frederic Carencotte, and its subsidiary Caremag was created in November 2020 by Carester and its employees. Caremag is building a plant on the Induslacq platform at Lacq, Pyrenees-Atlantiques, designed to take in 2,000 t/yr of end-of-life permanent magnets and 5,000 t/yr of mining concentrates and, at full ramp, to produce 800 t/yr of NdPr oxide (650 t didymium oxide plus 150 t Nd oxide), 500 t/yr of Dy oxide and 90 to 100 t/yr of Tb oxide; these are design targets, not actual output. The plant received its building permit in February 2023 and its operating permit in September 2023, and Carester also set up magnet dismantling activities at Echire (October 2021) and Venissieux (2023). In September 2024 Carester signed a binding 10-year offtake with Stellantis for more than 3,400 t of Nd, Pr, Dy and Tb oxides, 36% from recycling; a March 2024 agreement with Solvay is a memorandum of understanding. The investment decision was taken in December 2024, and in March 2025 Carester announced EUR 216 million of financing: EUR 106 million of French state support and up to EUR 110 million in equity and shareholder loans from a JOGMEC-Iwatani joint venture, which also signed a long-term heavy rare earth oxide supply contract for Japan. Construction began in April 2025. In October 2025 Brazilian Rare Earths signed a binding 10-year agreement to sell Carester heavy rare earth concentrate, up to 150 t/yr of contained DyTb, and Carester agreed to engineer its planned Brazilian separation plant. USA Rare Earth and InfraVia signed a term sheet in April 2026 and definitive agreements on July 23, 2026 to buy about 13.6% of Carester each, with a right for USA Rare Earth and LCM Europe to buy part of the oxide output; funding was expected in the third quarter of 2026, and no closing had been announced as of mid-October 2026. Neo Performance Materials signed a binding term sheet on August 31, 2026 to send magnet swarf for recycling and take back oxides, and Lindian Resources signed a binding 10-year feed offtake on September 3, 2026 under which supply does not begin until its Kazakhstan facility reaches commercial production. USA Rare Earth's July 2026 release gives Q4 2026 for the start of operations, while Lindian's September 2026 release says operations are targeted for 2027.

Where public sources disagree

Terbium oxide output: Carester's Caremag page gives 90 t/yr (with 500 t/yr Dy oxide, i.e., 590 t combined); USA Rare Earth's 23 Jul 2026 release gives 100 t/yr Tb oxide (600 t combined, matching Carester's Mar 2025 '600 t Dy+Tb' figure).
Start timing: USA Rare Earth's 9 Apr 2026 slides say operations commence Q3 2026 with run rate Q1 2027, while the same-day press release says commissioning late 2026; the 23 Jul 2026 release says operations Q4 2026; Lindian's 3 Sep 2026 ASX release says Caremag operations are targeted to begin in 2027.
Japanese funding: Carester says JOGMEC and Iwatani's joint venture will invest up to EUR 110M; METI says the Japanese government will contribute about EUR 100M through JOGMEC (Iwatani amount not given). These may be consistent (JOGMEC share of the EUR 110M) but neither source gives the split.
Kazakhstan plant attribution: Engineering News (3 Sep 2026) says Carester is advancing a DFS for a planned 8,000 t/yr REO facility in Kazakhstan; Lindian's ASX release says the 8,000 t/yr facility at Stepnogorsk is Lindian's, with the DFS prepared by Carester and Tetra Tech.
Share of heavy-RE output to Japan: Mining Technology (30 May 2025) says about half of heavy rare earth output goes to Japan; METI frames it as about 20% of future Japanese Dy/Tb demand (a demand share, not an output share).

Sources

Caremag EUR 216M financing (Carester) — Carester (2025-03-17)
USA Rare Earth definitive agreements for Carester stake — USA Rare Earth via GlobeNewswire (2026-07-23)
Caremag project page (outputs, timeline) — Carester (2026-10-16)
Carester press release, financing (PDF) — Carester (2025-03-17)
Japan-France rare earth cooperation (Caremag) — METI (2025-03-17)
Stellantis offtake press release — Carester (2024-09-30)
Lindian-Carester offtake and services (ASX) — Lindian Resources (2026-09-03)
Neo-Carester binding term sheet — Neo Performance Materials (2026-08-31)
BRE-Carester 10-year offtake — Brazilian Rare Earths via AAP/GlobeNewswire (2025-10-09)
USA Rare Earth term sheet 8-K (12.5%) — StockTitan (SEC 8-K) (2026-04-09)
USA Rare Earth Carester call transcript — USA Rare Earth (2026-04-09)
USA Rare Earth Q2 2026 earnings release — SEC EDGAR (2026-08-10)
TotalEnergies: Caremag site visit — TotalEnergies (2026-01-22)
Caremag project puts Europe back in the REE game — Mining Technology (2025-05-30)
Lindian inks offtake with Carester — Engineering News (2026-09-03)
Lacq 'magnet valley' (Caremag, LCM Europe) — L'Info Durable (AFP) (2026-01-22)
Carester lays first stone at Lacq (AFP) — Connaissance des Energies (2025-03-17)

How this page is sourced

Everything here comes from public sources — company filings, annual reports, exchange announcements, government releases and trade press. Every figure is linked to the document it came from and carries the date that document was published, because a capacity number without a date is not a fact, it is a rumor with a decimal point.

What is deliberately absent: material nonpublic information. I have spent more than two decades in this industry and a good deal of what I know about these companies I learned under NDA. Those obligations do not expire and they do not bend for a website. Nothing I have been told in confidence appears here in any form, and nothing on this page — or missing from it — should be read as a signal about what I know privately. I hold NDAs absolutely. It is the reason clients tell me things.

Judgment is the other thing left out on purpose. This page reports what has been published and who published it. Whether a target is credible, whether a ramp will hold, whether a capacity figure survives contact with the plant behind it — that is the work I do for clients, and it does not belong in a free reference page.

Where public sources disagree, I say so rather than picking a winner. Where a figure has not been published, the field says so rather than carrying an estimate. An empty field is information too.

Public filings tell you what a company has said. Whether it holds up is a different question, and the one I get hired to answer.

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