MP Materials
MP Materials' Fort Worth facility.
MP Materials has received millions through a federal tax program to advance the construction of its Fort Worth manufacturing facility.
The $58.5 million was awarded through the Section 48C Advanced Energy Project tax credit allocation, a program administered by the Department of Energy that evaluated the technical and commercial viability and environmental and community impact of approximately 250 projects, according to a press release.
MP Materials began constructing its facility in the AllianceTexas development in north Fort Worth in April 2022. The company expects to begin commercial production of precursor materials in Fort Worth this summer and finished magnets by late 2025.
MP will supply these products to General Motors, its foundational customer, to support its North American EV production.
MP Materials is the largest producer of rare earth materials in the Western Hemisphere. The company owns and operates the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility in California, the only rare earth mining and processing site of scale in North America. MP Materials produced approximately 15% of the rare earth content consumed in the global market in 2020.
NdFeB permanent magnets are critical inputs to the electric motors and generators that enable electric vehicles, robots, wind turbines, drones, defense systems and other technologies to transform electricity into motion and motion into electricity.
In Fort Worth, MP Materials is developing a 200,000-square-foot greenfield metal, alloy, and neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnet manufacturing facility, which will also serve as the business and engineering headquarters for its growing magnetics division, MP Magnetics.
The facility will create more than 100 skilled jobs.
The Fort Worth City Council approved a tax abatement agreement with the company on the project.
The company has also been awarded a $35 million contract through the U.S. Department of Defense.
According to a Section 232 investigation completed by the Department of Commerce in 2022, sintered NdFeB magnets are "required for critical infrastructure" and "irreplaceable in key defense applications," yet the U.S. is "essentially 100% dependent on imports," posing a serious national security risk. More than 90% of the world’s NdFeB magnets are produced in China, according to the report.