Magnesium —
the metal Europe forgot.
We’re bringing it back.
A material Europe needs.
A capability it lost.
The case for what we are building — and why now is the only right moment to build it.
Magnesium is lighter than aluminium, stronger than many steels by weight, and essential to almost every industry defining the next fifty years — automotive lightweighting, aerospace, defence, electronics, and the emerging generation of energy and green-industrial applications. It’s one of the most abundant elements on Earth, found in both rock and seawater — scarcity was never the problem.
And yet Europe produces virtually none of it. For two decades, the continent that pioneered modern metallurgy has imported more than 90% of its magnesium from a single external source, surrendering not just a supply chain but a strategic capability. When exports were briefly restricted in 2021, European production lines came within weeks of shutdown.
The disruption went deeper than logistics. Import dependency does not only control price — it controls what European industry is free to build, research, and imagine with the material. That freedom has been quietly missing for twenty years.
Maganoor was founded to change that.
The conditions that made European magnesium uncompetitive are being dismantled — by two forces arriving at the same moment: policy, and energy economics.
On policy, the EU Critical Raw Materials Act has named magnesium a strategic priority — defining exactly what a project must demonstrate to qualify for fast-track permitting, EIB financing, and institutional support: technical credibility, cross-border benefit, sustainability alignment, and a meaningful reduction in import dependency. Maganoor is being built to meet every one of those criteria — not to qualify for a designation, but because those criteria describe precisely the problem we set out to solve.
On energy, renewable capacity across Europe is growing faster than the grid can absorb it. Thousands of hours each year now see electricity prices at zero or below. The energy cost that priced Europe out of magnesium production for two decades is becoming, in windows of surplus, a structural advantage for those with the process intelligence to capture it.
This window will not stay open indefinitely. The right moment to build is now.
European industry has long evaluated magnesium on price per tonne. That calculation is now dangerously incomplete — and about to become outdated.
The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism is already law. From 2026 it applies escalating carbon costs to imports produced with high-carbon energy — which describes the overwhelming majority of magnesium available on global markets today. The price gap between imported and EU-produced magnesium narrows automatically as CBAM scales toward full implementation. EU-produced magnesium from renewable energy does not get more expensive relative to imports over time. It gets cheaper.
Price per tonne also never captured the 2021 supply shock: production shutdowns, emergency sourcing at panic prices, and strategic reviews that consumed far more management resource than any domestic supply premium ever would. Those costs are invisible in a price-per-tonne comparison — until they are not.
Industrial buyers in automotive, aerospace, and robotics are simultaneously under growing pressure to demonstrate clean, traceable, low-carbon supply chains. Access to EU-produced magnesium carries an inherent carbon credential that no import can replicate — and that procurement teams increasingly need to meet their own scope 3 commitments. And public funding instruments — CRMA strategic project designation, EIB financing, Innovation Fund grants — exist specifically to offset the investment cost of building that resilience, so the premium does not land entirely on the industrial buyer.
The question is no longer whether EU magnesium can be cost-competitive. It is whether European industry can afford to wait any longer for it to be.
Import dependency does not only constrain supply. It constrains imagination.
When a material must be sourced from a single external supplier, the innovation that requires cheap access, rapid iteration, and supply chain freedom quietly stops happening. Research programmes do not get funded. Startups do not form around it. Applications that depend on sensitive, sovereign supply chains — in advanced aerospace, in dual-use technology, in next-generation energy systems — get quietly de-prioritised, because no industrial company builds strategic capability on a foundation it does not control.
Europe has not merely been paying more for magnesium for two decades. It has been locked out of the innovation frontier that proximity to domestic supply creates — not for a deficit of European talent or ambition, but for a deficit of accessible, affordable, locally controlled material to experiment with.
Restoring EU magnesium production does not simply solve a procurement problem. It restarts a flywheel — of university research, startup formation, application development, and industrial adoption — that has been frozen for twenty years. Every materials lab that could not access affordable feedstock, every lightweight structures startup that could not build a reliable supply chain, every engineer who deprioritised magnesium because the geopolitical risk was too high — all of them become potential participants in an ecosystem that does not yet exist in Europe, but will.
That ecosystem is part of what Maganoor intends to help build.
We are not building a magnesium mine. We are not building a smelter. We are building the innovation and technology partner that European magnesium production and application has been missing — one that understands the metal, the process, the energy economics, and the markets deeply enough to change how all of them work together.
Positioned at the intersection of Europe’s renewable energy surplus and its critical materials challenge, Maganoor is designing optimised processes and business models — for producers who want to become more competitive, for the industrial sector ready to do more with this material, and for the emerging ecosystem of research institutions, startups, and strategic partners that European magnesium production will make possible. We also intend to develop our own magnesium-based products as part of that ecosystem.
Our pilot production line will be the proof of concept for everything this venture stands for: that the process design exists to make EU magnesium competitive, carbon-credentialed, and scalable — and that the moment to demonstrate it is now.
Europe cannot afford to remain dependent on supply chains that a single geopolitical decision, from any direction, can sever overnight. Industrial sovereignty in critical materials is not a policy aspiration. It is an economic and security necessity — and increasingly, the foundation on which competitive advantage in green and strategic industries will be built.
We believe magnesium is the most underestimated strategic material of the coming decade — not rare, not exotic, simply underproduced and underutilised in the places that need it most.
Maganoor exists because we believe that necessity is also an opportunity — for the right partners, in the right place, at exactly the right moment.
What we are. What we are not.
A magnesium producer
An innovation & technology partner
Value across the magnesium chain.
Four capability areas built on deep magnesium expertise — anchored by a pilot that will prove the model.
Magnesium Strategy & Advisory
We provide the ongoing strategic and technical advisory that makes a magnesium project fundable and executable — feasibility assessment, process design guidance, funding navigation, and partnership structuring, delivered by a team that understands the material as deeply as the market around it. The result is a project that holds up under real technical and financial scrutiny — ready to stand in front of an industrial partner, a regulator, or an investment committee, not just a slide deck.
→Talk to us. Let’s build the case together.
Production Optimisation & Pilot
Our model is built for producers and new entrants ready to bring magnesium production back to Europe — adapting existing facilities or designing new ones around a process that is genuinely competitive. Not every step works as planned the first time; where it doesn’t, we research, test, and iterate alongside our partners until it does. Flexible energy consumption is integrated into the architecture from the start. Our pilot production line will be the real-world proof that EU magnesium production works, scales, and competes.
→Have a facility in mind? Let’s evaluate it together.
Energy & Carbon Engineering
We know how to turn cheap and surplus electricity into a production advantage — timing operations to price windows, building load flexibility into the process itself, and locking CO₂ into stable form as part of production, so the MgO by-product carries a carbon-negative credential into construction, steel, and agriculture. As CBAM scales, that advantage only grows.
→Let’s map the advantage for your site.
Applications & New Products
European industry is only beginning to rediscover what magnesium can do — in EVs, robotics, aerospace, and other industries redefining what’s possible with lightweight materials. We connect manufacturers, researchers, and partners across that landscape, and we are developing our own magnesium-based products where we see the opportunity clearly.
→Get in touch to be part of it — and let’s connect the dots on who’s doing what.
The people behind Maganoor.
Deep expertise across materials, energy, and innovation.
Three decades in the technology world — scaling Microsoft’s global IoT business across 22 EMEA countries, with active business throughout Eastern Europe, driving data analytics at Teradata, and promoting, selling, and deploying lithium and ultracapacitor systems, plus battery-monitoring technology to keep them running. It’s a rare combination for a challenge this complex — built on spotting emerging trends early, and learning fast once inside them. At Maganoor, he leads strategy and commercial direction, bringing that same experience to building Europe’s magnesium supply chain.
Four decades in materials science at the Slovak Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Materials and Machine Mechanics, where he served as director and later led its applied research centre. His work in aluminium metal foams, powder metallurgy, and lightweight composites has reached serial industrial production for manufacturers including Ferrari and BMW — expertise in lightweight metal processing that transfers directly to magnesium. He has also led feasibility research into producing metallic magnesium from magnesite and magnesium hydride. Frantisek leads Maganoor’s technology roadmap.
Two decades building innovation ecosystems around renewable energy and low-carbon technology. He founded the Association for the Use of Renewable and Alternative Sources, building an international network of clean-tech startups and industry partners, and is a winner of the UN/UNIDO-backed Energy Globe Award for sustainability. He currently sits on the EU’s Carbon Capture and Utilisation working group in Brussels. At Maganoor, Filip leads the search for new magnesium applications and the partnerships that bring them to market.
Who we’re building this with.
Four kinds of partners we’re actively looking to hear from.
Producers & Energy Infrastructure
Metal producers with idle or underused capacity, and energy companies or grid operators with surplus power to put to work. Both are the operational partners who make production real — and exactly who our process design and energy integration expertise is built for.
Industrial Manufacturers
Manufacturers ready to take magnesium seriously as a structural material in their products, looking for a knowledgeable partner to navigate the shift from sourcing to application.
Research & Technology Partners
Research institutions and technology developers advancing lightweight materials, metal processing, and energy storage — looking to connect that work to real industrial application and production at scale.
Investors
Investors who see Europe’s critical materials gap as a generational opportunity rather than a risk to avoid, and who think in the multi-year horizon a supply chain of this scale requires.
Updates from Maganoor.
Milestones, partnerships, and announcements will be published here as they happen.
Nothing published yet — check back soon.
We’re early. As conversations, partnerships, and projects progress, we’ll share the updates here first. In the meantime, reach out directly below.
Start the conversation.
Tell us who you are and what you are working on. We will respond within two business days.
Direct contact
For partnership, investment, or technology enquiries, we prioritise direct conversation. Use the form or reach us directly.
Where we operate
Operating across the European magnesium value chain, with availability for online calls and meetings by arrangement across EU member states.
Registered Office
Maganoor AS - being established
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