Hertha Metals has broken ground in Conroe, Texas on Hertha Chalyx, its first commercial plant, designed to produce about 10,000 metric tons a year of steel-grade and magnet-grade high-purity iron combined. Built next to Hertha’s Pi100 pilot plant, Chalyx forms the first modern iron and steel innovation complex in the United States, where Hertha will develop and scale its process for making primary iron and steel.
Hertha developed the world’s first single-step process for making iron and steel from ore. Iron ore and natural gas go into a single furnace, and either liquid steel or high-purity iron comes out by controlling process chemistry. The process works with any grade of iron ore, including the low-grade fines that blast furnaces and direct reduction plants can’t use, and produces iron and steel at 25% lower cost than the blast furnace route, with safer operations and approximately 50% lower emissions on natural gas, or up to 98% lower emissions using hydrogen.
“I founded Hertha Metals because I believed we could significantly improve how the world makes iron and steel from ore, and that an industry so fundamental to our future still had enormous room for invention,” said Laureen Meroueh, CEO and Founder of Hertha Metals. “Over the last two years, our team has worked relentlessly to prove the promise of our technology through production. With Chalyx, we take the next step: proving the business and demonstrating that our technology can deliver commercially. We’re starting with high-purity iron to fill a critical gap in the domestic rare earth magnet supply chain, but the vision reaches much further. Successful commercial operations here will lay the foundation for our first 500,000-ton-per-year steel mill. For me, that is what makes today so meaningful: seeing persistence become the foundation for a new generation of iron and steelmaking.”
Chalyx’s first priority is high-purity iron for U.S. rare earth magnet manufacturers. An estimated 94% of the high-purity iron for those magnets is made in China. Hertha has already reached 99.95% purity at Pi100, the specification top magnet manufacturers require, and is in active supplier qualification with major U.S. rare earth magnet producers. Chalyx will also produce iron and steel for trials with steel producers and manufacturers.
The roughly $100 million plant will run on domestic iron ore, primarily from Minnesota’s Iron Range, and Texas natural gas. Chalyx is expected to come online in late 2027, with magnet-grade high-purity iron production beginning in early 2028.
Hertha also named CV Engineering, a firm that specializes in steel industry design and construction, as the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) partner for Chalyx. CV Engineering will lead engineering and construction through the plant’s completion, and Hertha expects to work with the firm on future facilities as it scales.
