By aicandy @Adobe Stock

The EU is urged to classify magnesite as a critical raw material to reduce dependence on China, which controls most of the supply, according to Alice Hancock and Joseph Cotterill of the Financial Times. RHI Magnesita CEO Stefan Borgas argues that including it on the EU’s list would boost local production and support decarbonization. Magnesite is crucial for high-temperature furnaces and processing other key materials like lithium and nickel. They write:

The EU urgently needs to classify a substance used to line furnaces and kilns for making cement, glass and steel as a critical raw material or supplies will become hostage to China, the world’s biggest producer of high-end industrial ceramics has warned.

Stefan Borgas, chief executive of London-listed RHI Magnesita, told the Financial Times that while magnesite was essential to basic chemical processes underlying Europe’s industrial base, its absence from a list of strategically important materials had disincentivised homegrown production.

Magnesite is used to make refractories, materials that allow furnaces to handle extremely high temperatures above 1,200C. Europe imports most of its magnesite from China, which controls two-thirds of global production. […]


In an effort to boost its supplies of the commodities required to make clean technologies such as batteries and wind turbines, the EU has listed 16 products including nickel, lithium and cobalt as “strategic” as part of a Critical Raw Materials Act that sets targets for their domestic extraction, processing and recycling. […]

The EU should update the critical raw materials list by May 24 2027, according to the act. Any material must be assessed before it can be added, an EU official said.

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