en.Wedoany.com Reported - Comstock Metals has announced a solar material recycling services agreement with Illuminate USA. Under the agreement, Nevada-based Comstock will provide transportation, sorting, and recycling services for solar cell panel manufacturing byproducts at Illuminate USA's facility in Pataskala, Ohio.
The partnership aims to provide a zero-landfill solution, reintroducing recycled materials into new industrial products while eliminating downstream liabilities. Comstock Metals states that its proprietary thermal process separates components from end-of-life solar panels, yielding primary aluminum, glass, and metals, achieving 100% useful material recovery.
Illuminate USA commenced production in February 2024 at a 1.1 million-square-foot facility in Pataskala. The company claims this facility is the largest single-site solar panel manufacturing plant in North America, with an annual capacity of 5 GW.
Prior to this partnership announcement, Comstock Metals had been planning to establish an industrial-scale recycling and logistics center in Cambridge, Ohio, located just over 60 miles from the Illuminate facility.
The agreement with Illuminate USA is part of a series of recent strategic collaborations for Comstock Metals. In April 2025, the company signed a master services agreement with RWE Clean Energy to provide recycling, decommissioning, and logistics services for the developer's U.S. solar projects. Comstock Metals noted that the two companies had previously recycled over 4 million pounds of end-of-life solar materials in Nevada and California.
In June 2025, Comstock Metals also formed a strategic partnership with Virtus Renewables, aiming to create an integrated recycling and logistics network for the solar market. The company states that its zero-landfill process recovers all materials, including aluminum, copper, silver, and glass, for reuse in the domestic supply chain.
In August 2025, Illuminate USA announced an agreement with another recycler, Solarcycle, to purchase recycled solar glass to support the production of 3 GW of modules annually for five years. The glass is expected to be delivered from Solarcycle's facility in Cedartown, Georgia, with deliveries beginning in 2028.
