Rare-earth magnet maker plans 1,000-job factory in North Carolina

Between the lines: Earlier this month, the Trump administration approved a $620 million loan from the U.S. Department of War (formerly the Department of Defense) to Vulcan and took an equity stake in the company to help kick-start its production.

Driving the news: On Tuesday, Vulcan and North Carolina agreed to an incentive package worth around $17.5 million to build the factory in Benson, near the intersection of Interstate 40 and Interstate 95, if the company meets hiring and investment goals.

• Johnston County and the town of Benson will also add incentives worth more than $94 million.
• The company will take over a 500,000-square-foot building built on speculation by Raleigh-based Edgewater Ventures. Vulcan has plans to eventually occupy a million square feet there.
• Vulcan had also been considering expanding in Ohio, according to state officials.

Zoom in: Vulcan will invest approximately $1 billion in the factory and hire 1,000 workers, with roles ranging from engineering and production to administrative management.

• The minimum average wage at the plant will be around $82,000.
• The jobs are expected to be created by 2029, and construction on the site is expected to kick off within the next 12 months.

State of play: Vulcan, founded in 2023, has a small-scale demonstration facility in Durham that has already hit key milestones in production, Vulcan Elements CEO John Maslin previously told Axios.

• The company was founded in Boston, but ultimately chose North Carolina after its executives performed an analysis of American markets with high-level talent, proximity to military installations, and a decent cost of living.
• The company has around 50 employees based at its Research Triangle Park office, which it will maintain as a research and development hub.
• The company said Benson has a strategic location near Raleigh and Fayetteville that it hopes to draw workers to. "It's our job to make sure [we build a company] people are willing to drive an extra 15 minutes because they want to come and work at Vulcan elements and solve a really hard and important problem," Maslin said.

Zoom out: Now, Vulcan must execute on an ambitious strategy to re-shore rare-earth magnets that have long been dominated by Chinese manufacturers.

• "Minerals have really become the most powerful form of currency when it comes to foreign policy now," Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, previously told Axios.
• Maslin said he first learned about these supply chain threats while serving in the Navy as a financial manager who procured materials for the ballistic missile submarine program.
• "We've seen how supply chains can be weaponized to impair national security imperatives and our country's economic resilience," he said. "What Vulcan has been able to prove is that you can make rare-earth magnets fully decoupled [from China] down to the equipment, the software and the material level."

The big picture: It's the latest economic win for North Carolina, which has announced a range of expansions this year, including a 14,000-job project from plane maker JetZero in Greensboro, a 1,200-job headquarters expansion from Scout Motors in Charlotte and a 400-job biomanufacturing facility from Genentech in Holly Springs.

What they're saying: Lee Lilley, North Carolina's commerce secretary, told Axios the state has tried to diversify the types of projects it recruits as a hedge against market uncertainty.

• "Sectors go up and down, and what we're trying to do is create shots on goal, frankly, for North Carolina's economy," Lilley said.