According to a press release published in mid-January, MP Materials, a top U.S. materials company, announced that it had started manufacturing a rare earth magnet, called neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) on a trial basis and that the factory would begin increasing its production before the end of this year.
The facility, named Independence, is located in Fort Worth, Texas, and it is slated to supply magnets to General Motors and other manufacturers in the United States.
MP’s spokesman Matt Sloustcher also said that the facility has an initial capacity of 1,000 tonnes per annum and has the infrastructure to scale up to 2,000 to 3,000 tonnes per year.
This is significant news as there are no large U.S. makers of neodymium magnets, which support important commercial and defense industries, including electric vehicle production.
NdFeB magnets have become the most powerful and valuable type in the market. They are used to produce motors for electric vehicles and for heating, ventilating, and cooling (HVAC) systems.
Not only that, they are also seen in wind turbine generators, tools and appliances, and audio speakers, among other gear. In addition, they are also important components of many military systems and platforms, such as fighter and bomber aircraft, submarines, precision-guided weapons, night-vision systems, and radars.
Currently, China is still dominating the magnet industry despite multiple noteworthy US neodymium-magnet projects.
However, MP Materials may have an interesting edge that hardly any firms, even in China, can do. MP can produce finished magnets starting with ore that the company mines itself while large companies typically perform just one or at most two of the four major steps along the path to making a rare-earth magnet.
These steps include mining the ore, refining the ore into rare-earth oxides, reducing the oxides to metals, and using the metals to make magnets. Each step is a major task requiring completely different equipment, processes, knowledge, and skill sets.
The Texas facility of MP Materials is not the only the major rare-earth-magnet project in the United States. Vacuumschmelze GmbH, a magnet maker based in Hanau, Germany, has begun constructing a US $500 plant in South Carolina through a North American subsidiary, e-VAC Magnetics.
Noveon Magnetics, in San Marcos, Texas, is another intriguing U.S. rare-earth magnet project that claims to produce 2,000 tonnes of NdFeB magnets per year.
Image & article source by MP Materials
