Vacuumschmelze (VAC)

Sintered rare-earth permanent magnets in both NdFeB, sold as VACODYM, and SmCo, sold as VACOMAX, alongside soft magnetic alloys, inductive components and cores. The company states roughly 85% of output is made to customer specification, for EV traction motors, wind generators, industrial automation, medical, aerospace and defense.

At a glance

Founded: 1923 — Founded 1 July 1923 when W. C. Heraeus spun off its melting and processing department; Siemens & Halske took a majority stake in 1933 and held it for decades.
Headquarters: Hanau, Germany
Ownership: Private. Owned by Ara Partners since October 2023, acquired from funds managed by Apollo. Earlier owners include Siemens, Morgan Crucible, One Equity Partners and OM Group. Neorem Magnets of Finland has been a subsidiary since 2007, and e-VAC Magnetics of Sumter, South Carolina is its US subsidiary. On 23 June 2026 Energy Fuels announced a definitive agreement to acquire VAC for approximately USD 1.9 billion; the transaction had not closed as of September 2026 and is expected to close in early 2027 subject to regulatory approval.
Revenue: Not publicly disclosed. This company does not publish revenue and no named third party has published an estimate of it.
No current revenue figure is published. VAC is a private German partnership; consolidated Bundesanzeiger filings exist for 2012 through 2024 but are behind a paywall and were not read. Two sourced datapoints exist instead: OM Group's 2011 acquisition release stated sales of EUR 423 million for the twelve months to 30 June 2011, and Energy Fuels states VAC's legacy business generated approximately USD 29 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. The latter is an earnings metric, not revenue.

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
Sintered NdFeB, e-VAC Magnetics, Sumter, South Carolina	approximately 2,000 t/yr. Whether the plant is running at that rate or has it installed is not clear from public sources: 130 of a planned 300 staff were in place at the July 2026 opening.	Operating	Jul 2026
Sumter expansion headroom, as stated by the acquirer	2,000 t/yr scalable to 12,000 t/yr	Announced	Jun 2026
European sintered NdFeB and SmCo capacity — Hanau since 1973, Ulvila since 1988, Horna Streda since 2003	not published	Operating	Jun 2026

Narrative

Vacuumschmelze, founded in Hanau in 1923 as a Heraeus spin-off, produces soft magnetic alloys, inductive components and sintered rare-earth permanent magnets in both NdFeB and SmCo. Siemens took a majority stake in 1933 and held it for decades; the company later passed to Morgan Crucible and then through successive private-equity owners, reaching Ara Partners in 2023. It acquired Finland's Neorem Magnets in 2007 and operates plants at Hanau, Ulvila and Horna Streda, employing about 4,000 people. Its US subsidiary e-VAC Magnetics runs a magnet plant at Sumter, South Carolina, rated at about 2,000 metric tons a year and backed by USD 94.1 million of Department of Defense funding. In June 2026 Energy Fuels agreed to acquire VAC for about USD 1.9 billion.

Where public sources disagree

The Energy Fuels acquisition has not closed. Any description of VAC's ownership is provisional until it does, and the German foreign-investment review was still reported as open in July 2026.
No European tonnage capacity is published by VAC or in any filing. Figures circulating for its European NdFeB capacity trace to paid consultancies or unsourced blogs.
VAC describes itself as the only Western manufacturer of sintered NdFeB EV-grade magnets and the largest producer of rare earth permanent magnets in the Western Hemisphere. Those are company claims, and MP Materials and Noveon have both started sintered NdFeB production in the United States since they were made.
The ownership chain between Siemens and One Equity Partners is poorly documented. VAC's own history says Morgan Crucible bought it in the mid-1990s; other accounts give 1999 to 2005. No primary source was located for either date.
The Sumter plant's commissioning dates differ across sources: online in late autumn 2025 per South Carolina Commerce in December 2023, completed late fall 2025 per VAC in April 2024, and commercial production beginning in fall 2025 with a formal opening on 15 July 2026 per e-VAC.

Sources

Company history — VACUUMSCHMELZE GmbH & Co. KG (accessed 2026-09-18)
Ara Partners acquires Vacuumschmelze — VACUUMSCHMELZE (2023-10-10)
Energy Fuels definitive agreement to acquire VAC — Energy Fuels Inc. (2026-06-23)
e-VAC Sumter plant opening — e-VAC Magnetics / VAC (2026-07)
e-VAC to build first US facility in Sumter County — South Carolina Department of Commerce (2023-12-13)
OM Group completes acquisition of Vacuumschmelze — OM Group via PR Newswire (2011-08-02)

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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