Magnesium

Overview

Magnesium is about one-third less dense than aluminum. It is the eighth most abundant element in the Earth's crust but never occurs uncombined.¹ It alloys readily with aluminum, making aluminum products stronger and easier to machine. Its strong affinity for chlorine and fluorine also makes it the reducing agent used to produce titanium, zirconium, hafnium, beryllium and uranium metal from their halides.²

Raw material is not scarce. Magnesium can be recovered from dolomite, serpentine, evaporite minerals, brines and seawater, and these resources range from large to virtually unlimited.³ The risk lies in smelting, which is concentrated in a single country. The United States lists magnesium as a critical mineral. The EU lists it as critical, and magnesium metal as a strategic raw material.⁴⁵

Where it comes from

World primary production was an estimated 1.1 million t in 2025, against smelter capacity of about 1.8 million t. China produced an estimated 950,000 t.³ The silicothermic Pidgeon process has become the mainstream smelting method. It reduces magnesium oxide from calcined dolomite at high temperature, and it is energy-intensive and emissions-heavy.⁶ Chinese smelters depend on dolomite and ferrosilicon as raw materials, and many use waste gas from nearby semicoke plants as fuel.²

• China950,000 t · 88%
• Russia60,000 t · 6%
• Brazil20,000 t · 2%
• Israel20,000 t · 2%
• Other countries33,000 t · 3%

World total shown is the sum of USGS country estimates; USGS rounds it to 1.1 million t. Source: Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Magnesium Metal

The other route is electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride from brines or seawater.¹ The only US primary smelter used this process at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Production there ended in 2022 after equipment failures, and the operator filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2025.³

Concentration has caused real disruptions. In August and September 2021, Chinese authorities ordered magnesium smelters in Shaanxi Province to cut energy use and meet emissions limits. Several plants in Fugu and Yulin shut down temporarily, and magnesium supplies decreased. Most of the affected capacity restarted by the end of the year.⁷

What it is used for

In the United States, die castings, mainly for the automotive industry, took an estimated 69% of primary magnesium in 2025. Aluminum-base alloys for packaging, transportation and other uses took 15%, and iron and steel desulfurization 9%.³

{{chart:end-uses}}

Secondary magnesium is used differently: about 58% goes into aluminum alloys and 42% into structural uses.³ Smaller uses include lightweight consumer products such as laptops, cameras and power tools, as well as flares and fireworks. Magnesium compounds have chemical and medical uses.¹

Grades and forms

Magnesium is traded mainly as unwrought pure metal and alloy ingot. US tariff schedules also separate powders and granules, wrought products and scrap. The main US import category for pure metal is 99.8% purity.³

Trade and policy

The United States imported more than 75% of the primary magnesium it used in 2025. In 2021–24, its main sources of 99.8% metal were Israel (47%), Turkey (31%), Russia (8%) and China (6%). Imports of that grade fell by 27% in the first eight months of 2025, while alloy and scrap imports rose.³

The US government is backing new domestic capacity. In February 2024 the Department of War awarded Defense Production Act Title III funding to a California company developing magnesium production from brines. Its pilot metal met the purity target in July 2025, and in December the company announced plans for a commercial plant in Arkansas.³ The FY 2025 plan for the National Defense Stockpile listed potential acquisitions of 3,500 t of magnesium.³

The EU is even more exposed. Its 2023 criticality assessment found that China supplied 97% of the magnesium the EU sources and 91% of global processing.⁸ The Critical Raw Materials Act sets 2030 benchmarks for strategic raw materials such as magnesium metal: 10% of EU consumption from EU extraction, 40% from EU processing and 25% from recycling, and no more than 65% from any single third country.⁵

Recycling and substitution

US secondary production was about 110,000 t in 2025, of which about 26,000 t came from old scrap and 82,000 t from new scrap. Aluminum-base alloys provided about 53% of the recovered magnesium.³

Aluminum and zinc can replace magnesium in castings and wrought products. Magnesium's light weight is an advantage over both, but it costs more. Calcium carbide can replace it for desulfurizing iron and steel, but it produces acetylene when it meets water.³

Sources

1. Magnesium: element information, properties and uses. Royal Society of Chemistry, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. 2022 Minerals Yearbook: Magnesium Metal. U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩²

3. Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Magnesium Metal. U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹

4. Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals. Federal Register, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

5. Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (Critical Raw Materials Act). EUR-Lex, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩ ↩²

6. Research on the Process, Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions of Different Magnesium Refining Processes. Materials (MDPI), 2023, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

7. 2021 Minerals Yearbook: Magnesium Metal. U.S. Geological Survey, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩

8. Study on the Critical Raw Materials for the EU 2023, Final Report. European Commission, accessed 2026-10-03. ↩