September 17, 2026 - MP Materials Making Permanent Magnets In Texas

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for September 17, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. 

Back in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, General Motors made a key strategic decision about sourcing components. After decades of shifting toward globalization and chasing the lowest price for everything, it suddenly became clear to everyone how brittle the supply chains had become with so many key materials coming from just one region of the world. Instead, it chose to buy where you build and a more diverse supply chain. 

At the same time, a relatively new company centered around a mine 45 minutes west of Las Vegas was hoping to expand into a more vertically integrated operation. MP Materials was formed in 2017 to purchase the Mountain Pass mine out of bankruptcy. Mountain Pass is one of only four known ore-rich sources of rare earth elements in the world, with two in China and one in Australia. Rare earth elements are common throughout the Earth's crust, but rarely concentrated enough to make them commercially viable. The Mountain Pass mine has a refinery right next door that processes the raw ore into concentrates that can then be used downstream for production of an array of products including magnets, batteries, solar panels, LEDs, MRI machines, and even refining crude oil. 

GM approached MP about purchasing material to have made into permanent magnets for motors, something that was only available from China at the time. Ultimately, with an agreement from GM to purchase magnets, MP Materials established a magnetics division and built a factory in Fort Worth, Texas, that I visited this week. MP began pilot production in 2024 and is now expecting to finalize validation with GM and begin shipping magnets to the automaker's motor production lines in Toledo, Ohio. 

At full-rate production, GM will be purchasing 1,000 metric tonnes of magnets from MP annually. MP also has production deals with Apple and the Department of Defense. The initial plant in Fort Worth that will supply GM and Apple has a capacity of 3,000 tonnes of finished magnets annually, and a second factory is currently under construction about 10 miles away with a capacity of 7,000 tonnes that will be supplying defense contractors.  

MP Materials is also evaluating other lines of business that can utilize components from other rare earth elements extracted at Mountain Pass. Mountain Pass contains usable quantities of 15 of the 17 elements classified as rare earths and already produces nearly 16% of the world’s supply of these materials. 

Thanks for listening.