Inside MP Material’s rare earth magnet factory in Fort Worth.
MP Materials
FORT WORTH — MP Materials has the components of a great business tale.
A bankruptcy purchase. A startup in an unassuming warehouse behind a 7-Eleven gas station. A promising partnership.
Inside its 250,000-square-foot factory in Fort Worth, executives with the Las Vegas-based rare earth magnets manufacturer took a jaunt down memory lane last week as leaders from General Motors joined them to tout the company’s latest milestone.
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They’ve proven they can operate from “mine to magnet to motor” now that MP has delivered its first magnets for the legacy car company’s electric vehicles. The prototype magnets are being tested in Pontiac, Mich., for vehicles such as the Chevrolet Equinox EV, GMC Sierra EV and the Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport X.
This moment had been a long time coming since GM invested in MP years before the company had ever manufactured a magnet.
Inside MP Material’s rare earth magnet factory in Fort Worth.
MP Materials
MP chairman and CEO James Litinsky said that when he co-founded the company nearly a decade ago, many believed the rare earth minerals supply chain couldn’t be restored in the U.S.
“We really thought that we could [restore it], but … as we like to say, ‘Multibillion-dollar supply chains do not move overnight,’ ” Litinsky said. “We would not be here without GM, without their commitment and their understanding to invest in what had to happen to build everything we’ll see today.”
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Shilpan Amin, GM’s global chief procurement and supply chain officer, said the company reassessed its supply chain coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. They shifted away from globalization and chasing the lowest-cost parts from around the world toward regionally controlling as many operations as possible to avoid external factors impacting its supply chain.
Shilpan Amin (left), General Motors global chief procurement and supply chain officer, and MP Materials CEO James Litinsky pose for a photo inside MP’s Independence factory in AllianceTexas.
MP Materials
A “buy-where-you-build strategy,” Amin said.
A big gap in GM’s chain, Amin said, was magnets and heavy rare earths.
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Now, metal, alloy and magnets are made in the Fort Worth factory.
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The celebration of finally delivering magnets to GM called for a tour of the factory floor, giving a small group of reporters a rare glimpse inside the operations at Independence, which MP says is the world’s only fully integrated rare earth metal-to-magnet manufacturing facility.
The plant, located in Ross Perot Jr.’s Hillwood’s AllianceTexas, employs 350 people in its magnets division.
MP Materials CEO James Litinsky (center) listens to Perot Group and Hillwood Chairman Ross Perot Jr. (left) as he speaks to Steven Litinsky, during the ground breaking of Las Vegas-based MP Materials in Fort Worth in April 2022.
File Photo/Shafkat Anowar
Some employees wore bright blue lab coats with American flag patches on the sleeve, a nod — like the massive U.S. flag hanging in the factory and the red, white, and blue hard hat installation in the lobby — to MP’s mission to reshore the country’s rare earth supply chain.
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The 24/7 facility has manufactured neodymium-iron-boron magnets since 2024 with minerals from the company’s mine in Mountain Pass Mine, Calif. It’s the only site of its kind in the Western Hemisphere and was purchased out of bankruptcy by MP in 2017.
The magnets can be used in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, aerospace and defense systems, medical equipment, smartphones and more.
Manufacturing the magnets is an intensive, highly technical multistep process.
Inside MP Material’s rare earth magnet factory in Fort Worth.
MP Materials
Executive vice president of magnetics Alan Lund, senior vice president of engineering Judson Marte and senior director of magnet technology Eddie Pang gave mini-science and chemistry lessons as they described what needs to happen for rare earth oxides to transform into magnets, like “grain boundary diffusion.”
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The rare earth oxides are converted into metal, then processed by melting, alloying, milling, pressing, sintering, machining and finishing. The final product is a magnet that MP can create — at scale — with specific grades and shapes, depending on customer needs.
Last week, a red Cadillac was parked on the factory floor among the rooms of tall and long blue, yellow and silver machinery. A traction motor sat on a table next to it so those on the tour group could see exactly where the magnets would go.
Now that MP has delivered its first magnets to GM to test in its electric vehicles, the company plans to start commercial shipments later this year.
Once it’s operating at full capacity, the factory is expected to produce 1 million magnets each day.
Magnets manufactured by MP Materials.
MP Materials
“Actually more than a million,” clarified Matt Sloustcher, MP’s executive vice president of corporate affairs.
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While GM has been a long-term partner, MP Materials also secured partnerships last year with technology company Apple and the Department of Defense, since rebranded to the Department of War.
MP Materials’ North Texas footprint is expanding as the company constructs another facility in AllianceTexas. The $1.25 billion, 120-acre site is about 10 miles away in Northlake. The new factory, named 10X, will be like the Independence factory multiplied by five and will create more than 1,500 jobs.
When asked by The Dallas Morning News why North Texas made the most sense as the location for MP’s manufacturing operations, executives cited a strong partnership with Hillwood as one of the top reasons. And, as Texans know:
“The Fort Worth area really stood out for its ability to build,” Lund said. “You can still build things here in Fort Worth, and at a speed you can’t do in other parts of the country.”
The exterior of MP Material’s Independence facility in Fort Worth.
MP Materials
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.