Magrathea, a company developing innovative technology for the production of carbon neutral light metal from seawater, has sold metal to a customer from the first new electrolytic magnesium smelter designed, built, and operated on American soil in the 21st century.
In February 2024, Magrathea announced a $28M public-private partnership with the US Department of Defense to fund the scale-up of the company’s technology for producing light metal. In March 2024,Magrathea announced a sustainable brine supply partnership with Cargill who is supplying feedstock to Magrathea’s R&D scale-up facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Magrathea is commissioning a two tonne per year R&D pilot and has produced >99.9% pure magnesium metal within the company’s first three production campaigns of pilot commissioning. The company’s first customer uses magnesium in an unsubstitutable application critical to national security. The customer’s uniquely stringent specifications are often considered harder to meet using thermal technologies such as the Pidgeon Process or other inefficient thermal reductions.