Tetra is considering a magnesium project in Arkansas with Pentagon-backed Magrathea

Tetra Technologies said on Tuesday that it may form a joint-venture with the Pentagon-backed startup Magrathea in order to build America's first magnesium refinery, and increase domestic supplies of this metal.

U.S. Magnesium, a privately owned company, closed its Utah operation in 2022 due to environmental concerns. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, China produces 95% of all magnesium in the world. Magnesium is used as an alloy for steel and aluminium across the aerospace, energy, and defense sectors.

Texas-based Tetra announced that it had signed a termsheet with Magrathea for the study of a joint venture. If formed, this JV would add Magrathea’s new magnesium production technologies to Tetra’s bromine, lithium, and underground geological formation in Smackover.

Tetra's goal is to remove lithium, bromine and magnesium from Smackover brines prior to reinjecting them back into the earth.

Tetra has reached an agreement with Magrathea on legal and financial terms. The company will test its technology over the next six-months, which uses electricity to remove magnesium from seawater and convert it to metal. This process is cleaner than the current magnesium refining method.

Brady Murphy, Tetra CEO, said that this is a new technology. Scientists are confident it works. But we have to show that it can be scaled up at a commercial rate.

Tetra published a study in September that showed the Smackover contained a magnesium reserve of approximately 2 million metric tonnes.

The companies stated that if a JV is signed, Magrathea will hold 51% and Tetra 49%.

Murphy said that the $28 million Pentagon grant given to Magrathea in 2013 was a vote for confidence in the technology of the startup.

Magrathea of San Francisco, named after a fictional world in the novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," chose Arkansas to demonstrate its technology first due to the interest the state has in the production of critical minerals.

Alex Grant, CEO of Magrathea, said: "More importantly than anything else, it's about building in an area where people actually want to build stuff." (Reporting and editing by Thomas Derpinghaus; Ernest Scheyder)

(source: Reuters)