Magnet Costing

Rare Earth Magnet Cost Estimation: What Drives Price per Kilogram and How to Quote It

A cost breakdown for sintered NdFeB magnets: material share, yield loading, furnace economics, scrap credits, and the five places quotes usually go wrong.

Sintered NdFeB pricing is a material story first. On a typical block magnet quoted at 60 dollars per kg, rare earth inputs are 50 to 70 percent of cost, conversion through press, sinter, and machining is 20 to 30 percent, coating adds 3 to 8 dollars per kg, and everything else, meaning labor, inspection, packaging, and magnetization, fits in the remainder. Standard grades ship at roughly 40 to 90 dollars per kg finished, and high coercivity grades with heavy rare earth additions can clear 150. An estimator who nails the alloy math and yield loading lands within 5 percent; one who prices from last year's purchase order can miss by 30.

Build the material line from composition, not from a catalog number. A common grade carries about 30 to 31 weight percent NdPr, 1 percent boron, small cobalt, gallium, and aluminum additions, and iron for the balance. At NdPr metal near 85 dollars per kg, light rare earth content alone contributes about 26 dollars per alloy kilogram. Heavy rare earths drive the surcharges: dysprosium metal around 380 dollars per kg means each 1 percent Dy adds roughly 3.80 dollars per kg of alloy. The Rare Earth Cost Sensitivity calculator shows how a 20 percent NdPr move flows through to finished cost, which is why serious quotes carry a 30 day validity and an index clause.

Never price material at nominal part weight. Divide the material line by compound yield: at 68 percent alloy to finished yield, 26 dollars of contained value becomes 38 dollars per shipped kilogram. Then take back the scrap credit. Grinding swarf and slicing sludge sell to recyclers at roughly 20 to 40 percent of contained rare earth value, and clean solid scrap fetches more; on 0.46 kg of loss per finished kilogram, the credit can return 3 to 5 dollars. The Scrap Recovery Value calculator nets the two so the quote reflects real material burn. Forgetting the credit hands margin to the recycler; forgetting yield loading hands it to the customer.

Machine time in this business is mostly furnace time. A vacuum sinter and age cycle runs 14 to 18 hours and carries 300 to 600 kg depending on part size and setter density. At a loaded furnace rate of 80 to 120 dollars per hour covering power, cooling water, and process gas, sintering costs about 2.50 to 6.00 dollars per kg. Downstream, slicing and grinding cells at 35 to 75 dollars per hour dominate conversion on small or complex parts: a rotor arc needing 45 seconds of grind time at 60 dollars per hour adds 0.75 dollars per piece before yield loading, often more than its sintering share.

Labor and overhead behave differently than in a machine shop. Automated large scale plants run direct labor at 5 to 10 percent of cost; a western plant with manual finishing, inspection, and packing runs 15 to 20 percent. Absorb overhead on furnace hours, the true constraint, rather than on direct labor hours, or small parts will look artificially cheap. Coating is usually outsourced at 3 to 8 dollars per kg with minimum lot charges near 300 dollars, so short runs of small magnets can see coating exceed 15 percent of piece cost. Magnetizing plus 100 percent flux inspection adds another 0.05 to 0.15 dollars per part.

Estimates die in predictable places. The top five: quoting from gross rather than net yield, which understates material 30 to 45 percent on complex arcs; missing the dysprosium or terbium surcharge when the customer's 150 C or 180 C operating spec forces a higher coercivity grade; ignoring tariffs and export controls, which have added 25 percent or more to landed cost on some China origin magnets; letting a 60 day customer decision window outlive a 30 day price validity; and skipping freight, duty, and insurance, typically 2 to 4 percent, noting that magnetized parts ship under IATA magnetic material rules and cost more by air.

A defensible quote shows its skeleton: contained rare earth value at a dated index price, yield loaded material net of scrap credit, furnace and machining conversion, coating, magnetize and inspect, overhead, then margin. Offer volume breaks tied to real economics: a full furnace load, often around 400 kg, is the honest break point, not a round part count. Add a documented 3 to 5 percent adder for single sourced heavy rare earths, and state the pass through formula, for example plus or minus 1 dollar per kg for each 10 percent NdPr index move. Buyers accept indexation when the math is visible; they reject padded flat numbers.

Published 2026-07-02.