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The Ministry of Heavy Industries has received 20 bids through a global tender on the Central Public Procurement portal for selecting manufacturers to establish integrated sintered NdFeB rare earth permanent magnet facilities in India.
The bids come under the Scheme to Promote Manufacturing of Sintered Rare Earth Permanent Magnets (REPM), approved by the Union Cabinet on 26 November 2025 with a financial outlay of ₹7,280 crore.
The outlay comprises a sales-based incentive of ₹6,450 crore over five years and a capital subsidy of ₹750 crore.
The scheme targets 6,000 metric tonnes per annum of integrated rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing capacity in India.
Bidders include 20 Microns Limited, Attero Recycling Private Limited and the BaRupOn-IRP Consortium among others, spanning materials, recycling and consortium-led entrants.
NdFeB stands for neodymium-iron-boron. Sintering is the process by which a powdered alloy is compacted and heated below its melting point until the particles fuse into a dense solid — the route that produces the highest-performance permanent magnets available. Their strength per unit mass is what makes them indispensable in electric vehicle traction motors, wind turbine generators, hard drives, speakers, and aerospace and defence actuators; a weaker magnet means a heavier, larger motor for the same output. The hard part is not pressing and sintering the powder but everything before it: mining rare earth ores such as monazite, separating individual rare earth elements from one another — chemically very similar and therefore difficult to separate — reducing them to metal and alloying them. Global capacity in those upstream stages is heavily concentrated, so a country that only sinters imported alloy remains dependent. That is why the scheme specifies integrated manufacturing facilities and why the incentive structure combines a capital subsidy with a sales-based incentive paid over five years: capital support builds the plant, while the sales-linked component rewards sustained output rather than announcement.
Simple Analogy: Anyone can bake bread if flour arrives by the sack. Owning the field and the mill is what makes the bakery independent — and that is the part the scheme is paying for.
Establish integrated rare earth permanent magnet manufacturing in India and reduce import dependence in a critical input
Key: Approved by the Union Cabinet on 26 November 2025 with an outlay of ₹7,280 crore — ₹6,450 crore of sales-based incentive over five years and ₹750 crore of capital subsidy — targeting 6,000 metric tonnes per annum of integrated capacity. The global tender was issued on 20 March 2026 and 20 bids have been received.
Build a resilient value chain for the minerals essential to green technologies
Key: Approved by the Union Cabinet on 29 January 2025 under the Ministry of Mines, with ₹16,300 crore of government expenditure and an expected ₹18,000 crore of PSU investment over FY2024-25 to FY2030-31. It covers exploration, acquisition of overseas assets, recycling and processing — the upstream half of the problem the REPM scheme addresses downstream.
Identify the minerals whose supply risk matters most to India
Key: A Ministry of Mines committee identified 30 critical minerals in November 2022, of which 24 were placed in Part D of Schedule I of the MMDR Act, 1957 — the category auctioned by the Central Government. Rare earth elements fall within this framework.
Administers the REPM scheme, issued the global tender and will select the manufacturers; it is also the ministry behind India's electric mobility schemes, which are among the largest end-users of these magnets
The public sector undertaking engaged in mining and processing beach sand minerals including monazite, the principal domestic source of rare earths
Administers the National Critical Mineral Mission and the MMDR Act framework under which rare earth and other critical mineral concessions are granted
Traction motors in electric vehicles are the largest emerging demand source for NdFeB magnets, which links this scheme directly to India's EV manufacturing and battery policies.
Direct-drive wind turbines use large permanent magnets; India's wind capacity of 58.14 GW and rising annual additions make this a domestic demand driver as well as an import exposure.
The same session of Parliament passed the MMDR Amendment Bill on mineral taxation — the fiscal end of the mineral value chain whose manufacturing end this scheme funds.
Rare earth separation and magnet production are among the most geographically concentrated industrial capabilities in the world, which is why self-reliance here is framed as strategic rather than merely commercial.
GS Paper 3 > Indian Economy: Industrial Policy; Science and Technology: Materials
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Science
General Awareness > Industrial Schemes and Manufacturing
Critical minerals and rare earth self-reliance have become recurring Prelims and GS3 Mains material since 2023
A neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnet, the strongest in commercial use, essential to EV motors, wind turbines, electronics and defence systems.
Compacting and heating a powdered alloy below its melting point until particles fuse into a dense solid — the process route named in the scheme.
Support paid on the value of goods actually sold, as with ₹6,450 crore of the REPM outlay over five years — rewarding output rather than capacity announcements.
A plant covering multiple stages of the value chain rather than final assembly alone — the scheme's requirement, aimed at reducing upstream dependence.
A phosphate mineral found in India's beach sands and the principal domestic source of rare earth elements, processed by Indian Rare Earths Limited.