Orano (with CEA Liten): Grenoble magnet pilot line

The French state-owned nuclear fuel-cycle group, which with the CEA runs a pilot line in Grenoble that recycles end-of-life NdFeB magnets into alloy and presses and sinters new magnets, at about 4 t/yr. It has said it will hand the process to an industrial partner rather than build a plant itself.

Points to check

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

The Grenoble line is a pilot of about 4 t/yr (period disputed, see conflicts) on CEA premises, not an industrial plant.
Orano has said it does not intend to build a large-scale magnet plant itself; the process package is to be transferred to an industrial partner, and none was named as of Sep 2026.
Public funding is grant-based (France Relance via Bpifrance; Horizon Europe €6.50 million EU contribution to MAGELLAN); the Magnolia grant amount is not published.
The 25% recycled-content goal is stated as a target still being integrated ('accelerate the integration of secondary raw materials', CEA, 24 Sep 2026), not an achieved production share.
The MAGELLAN end date moved from December 2026 (at launch) to 31 March 2027 (CORDIS), and CORDIS reporting notes 'initial implementation delays'.

At a glance

Founded: 2018 — Created in 2016 as the fuel-cycle company carved out of Areva during its restructuring (combining Areva Mines, Areva NC, Areva Projects and Areva Business Support); renamed Orano on 23 January 2018 after French State recapitalization and entry of JNFL and MHI. Its permanent-magnet program began in 2021 (per Orano) and the Magnolia consortium in April 2022.
Headquarters: Châtillon (Hauts-de-Seine), Île-de-France, France
Ownership: French State-controlled, no equity listing. Shareholders at 31 Dec 2024: French State 90.33%, Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd (JNFL) 4.83%, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) 4.83%, CEA 1 share. By decree the State must keep a majority above 50%. Orano SA bonds trade on Euronext Paris. The magnet work sits in Orano Projets (Orano Projets SAS coordinates the EU MAGELLAN project).
Stage: Developing. A grant-funded pilot line, running since September 2025 and making N45UH-grade magnets at about 4 t/yr; no industrial plant or investment decision, and Orano plans to license the process rather than build one.
Listing: Government-owned. French state 90.33%; bonds only.
Revenue: €5,138 million
Reported, FY2025 (year to 31 Dec 2025); H1 2026 was €2,696 million.
Source

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
Grenoble pilot line, NdFeB magnet output	4 t/yr of magnets (output), with 25% recycled material, per OPCO 2i (Nov 2025); '50 kilos per day, i.e. four [metric tons] per year' (translated) per Essor Isère (Sep 2025). Some sources give only 'installed capacity of 4 [metric tons]' (translated) with no period (see conflicts).	Pilot scale	Nov 2025
MAGELLAN project supply-chain target (Horizon Europe), EU-wide	Aim to establish a 2,000 t/yr supply chain for magnets (stated as about 10% of Europe's projected 2040 EV traction-motor market) and avoid mining the equivalent of 535 t of light REE a year. These are project goals, not built capacity.	Announced	2024

Narrative

Orano's permanent magnet work is a research program run with CEA Liten, the French atomic energy commission's energy technologies laboratory in Grenoble. Under the Magnolia consortium, launched in 2022 with Valeo, Paprec and others and funded through France Relance and Bpifrance, and the EU Horizon Europe project MAGELLAN, which Orano coordinates with a €6.50 million EU contribution, the partners built a pilot line of about 220 square meters on CEA premises, inaugurated on September 19, 2025. The line follows a short-loop recycling route: end-of-life magnets are remelted into alloy without separating the rare earths, strip-cast, milled to fine powder, pressed in a magnetic field and sintered, with a target of 25% recycled rare earth content. Its capacity is given as 4 t/yr of magnets. In September 2026 the CEA reported that the line had reproducibly made grade N45UH sintered NdFeB, with a remanence of 1.34 T and a coercivity of 1,915 kA/m at 20 °C, and Valeo is to test the magnets against automotive specifications. Orano has said it does not intend to build an industrial magnet plant itself and will transfer the process package to an industrial partner; none has been named. The sources reviewed describe no separation or oxide-to-metal work by Orano, and the source of the virgin rare earth alloy used on the line is not stated. Orano, the former fuel-cycle business of Areva, is 90.33% owned by the French state; rare earths are not reported separately in its results.

Where public sources disagree

Pilot capacity period: OPCO 2i (3 Nov 2025) says the line 'can produce 4 [metric tons] of magnets per year with 25% recycled material' (translated), and Essor Isère (22 Sep 2025) says '50 kilos per day, i.e. four [metric tons] per year' (translated); Décideurs (4 Feb 2026) and 100-transitions (25 Sep 2026) give only 'installed capacity of 4 [metric tons]' (translated) with no period, and the Orano 'take action on transitions' page says '4-ton pilot process'. Arithmetic: 50 kg/day x 365 days = 18.25 t/yr; 4 t/yr at 50 kg/day implies about 80 operating days a year.
MAGELLAN end date: Magnetics Magazine (article at project start, 2024) says January 2024 to December 2026; CORDIS lists 1 Jan 2024 to 31 Mar 2027.
MAGELLAN partner count: Magnetics Magazine says 15 organizations across 8 countries; Orano (Sep 2025), CEA (Sep 2025/Sep 2026) and the magellan-horizon.eu consortium page list 14 partners in 8 countries.
Consortium size: Orano's program page says 'two consortiums with approximately 20 partners' in total; Techniques de l'Ingénieur (10 Oct 2025) says two consortiums 'with ~20 partners each'. Named partners: Magnolia 5 + MAGELLAN 14 = 19, with Orano and CEA in both.
Program start and R&D history: Orano's program page says the program launched in 2021; Orano's 'new unexpected uses' page says Magnolia launched April 2022; CEA (Sep 2025) says development since 2022; Essor Isère (22 Sep 2025) cites 5 years of collaborative R&D and a 2013 strip-casting furnace investment; Techniques de l'Ingénieur (10 Oct 2025) says over 10 years of R&D.
Funding named in coverage of the Sep 2026 result: Interesting Engineering (26 Sep 2026) lists no funding; the CEA release (24 Sep 2026) names France Relance and Horizon Europe (no amounts). This is an omission, not a figure conflict.
Guillaume Dureau's title: Interesting Engineering (26 Sep 2026) calls him Orano Senior Executive Vice President; the Orano release (Sep 2025) gives Senior Executive Vice President, Projects BU and Innovation Director; Essor Isère (Sep 2025) calls him innovation director; the CEA Sep 2026 page describes him as Orano's R&D director.
French national rare-earth plan, related context not about Orano: the DGE page says the plan was presented 5 May 2026 and targets '100% of European needs in heavy rare earths' with France 2030 support of about €330 million across about 40 projects; the Ministry of Economy press release (6 May 2026) says the target is '10% of world heavy rare earth demand, i.e. more than 100% of French needs' and cites €180 million of State support for nearly €600 million of investment at Lacq, La Rochelle and Grenoble. Neither page names Orano.

Sources

China's magnet dominance challenged, high performance magnet production validated on pilot line — Interesting Engineering (Maria Mocerino) (2026-09-26)
Le CEA et Orano valident la fabrication d'aimants de haute performance sur leur pilote — CEA (2026-09-24)
Le CEA et Orano valident la fabrication d'aimants de haute performance sur leur pilote (news page) — CEA (2026-09-24)
Orano and CEA launch a new pilot line - unique in Europe - for recycling and manufacturing rare earth-based permanent magnets — Orano (2025-09)
Le CEA et Orano : une nouvelle ligne pilote pour les aimants permanents à base de terres rares — CEA (2025-09)
Manufacturing high-performance permanent magnets with a share of recycled material — Orano (2025)
Nuclear industry - New unexpected uses — Orano (undated)
Take action on transitions — Orano (undated)
MAGELLAN - MAGnets in rEsiLient suppLy chAiNs (project reporting) — CORDIS, European Commission (2026)
Consortium - Magellan Horizon — MAGELLAN project (undated)
MAGELLAN highlighted during Orano-CEA presentation at VivaTech 2026 — MAGELLAN project (2026-06)
Magellan Project for Magnet Recycling & Production in Europe Begins, Led by Nuclear Fuel Company Orano — Magnetics Magazine (2024)
Benoît Richebé (Orano): "Aujourd'hui, 1% seulement des aimants usagés est recyclé en Europe" — Décideurs Magazine (2026-02-04)
Aimants haute performance : la ligne pilote d'Orano et du CEA franchit un cap — 100 transitions / Décideurs (Alexandre Hervaud) (2026-09-25)
Orano mise sur les aimants permanents — OPCO 2i (Isabelle Lo Russo) (2025-11-03)
A Grenoble, le CEA et Orano recyclent des aimants de haute performance — Essor Isère / mesinfos (Caroline Thermoz-Liaudy) (2025-09-22)
Une ligne pilote stratégique pour recycler les aimants permanents européens — Techniques de l'Ingénieur (Nicolas Louis) (2025-10-10)
La France vient de pénétrer un cercle très restreint de pays capables de maitriser toute la chaine des aimants permanents grâce à Orano et au CEA — media24.fr (2026-09-28)
2025 results above expectations. Solid outlook for 2026. — Orano (2026-02-20)
2025 annual results — Orano (2026-02-20)
Orano: 2026 Half-Year Results in Line With Annual Outlook Despite Circumstantial Production Stoppages — Business Wire (Orano release) (2026-07-30)
Orano Annual Activity Report 2024, shareholding — Orano (2025)
Orano announces the completion of a share capital increase of 300 million euros — Orano (2024-10-24)
Orano — Wikipedia (2026)
Plan national de résilience « Terres rares et aimants permanents » — Direction générale des Entreprises (2026-05-05)
La France engage la reconquête de sa souveraineté industrielle sur les terres rares et les aimants permanents — Ministère de l'Économie (press) (2026-05-06)
CIME - About us — Orano (undated)

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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