Coverage by Skessuhornið

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Last year, the leadership of Njörður Holding ehf. presented plans to establish a plant at Grundartangi for producing magnesium metal from seawater. In an interview with Skessuhorn, Stefán Ás Ingvarsson, CEO of Njörður, says that preparations are going well. Over the past few years, Stefán Ás has developed a method to extract the metal from seawater in an environmentally friendly and nearly carbon-free manner.

Stefán, who is an electrical engineer with research facilities at Stanford University in California, notes that magnesium is the lightest structural metal currently in production, about 36% lighter than aluminum and 78% lighter than steel. It also has a higher strength-to-weight ratio and greater corrosion resistance than aluminum. The metal is therefore expected to become a key material in the future of lightweight and mobile technologies, such as in the automotive, defense, and electronics industries. As an example, he mentions that a car with a 400-kilometer range could travel 540 kilometers if it were made from magnesium instead of aluminum.

Today, nearly all of the world’s magnesium production takes place in China using processes that are highly polluting and heavily coal-dependent. Stefán Ás explains that the method developed by Njörður’s team, by contrast, is fully sustainable, producing neither chemical waste nor carbon emissions. The company has secured a patent for this production method, which has already been successfully tested. “This presents an excellent opportunity to produce a highly sought-after metal at a competitive price without harming the environment” says Stefán Ás.