[Sejong=Asia Economy Reporter Joo Sang-don] The government is set to actively promote technology development to ensure the stable supply of magnesium-based ceramic raw materials, which rely on over 90% imports from China and Japan.
On the 4th, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced a support plan for the 'Magnesium (Mg)-based Ceramic Raw Material Domestic Production Pilot Project.' The institutions selected for the new projects will be finalized next month after evaluation.
This project will support a total of 22.9 billion KRW in research and development (R&D) over five years (2021?2025) across six tasks for small and medium-sized ceramic companies and mid-sized enterprises.
Magnesium-based ceramic raw materials are used for steelmaking refractories and heat dissipation filler materials for electric vehicle batteries. The global market is worth 11 trillion KRW, and the domestic market is about 141.4 billion KRW, with a high proportion of magnesium oxide used for steelmaking refractories. Domestic demand is 264,000 tons (approximately 141 billion KRW), with low-grade materials of about 93% purity mainly imported from China, and high-grade materials of over 98% purity mainly imported from Japan. As of last year, import values were approximately 98 billion KRW from China and 20 billion KRW from Japan.
The project supports two areas: ▲ domestic supply of magnesium-based raw materials ▲ development of magnesium-based applied products.
First, up to 5.3 billion KRW per task will be provided over five years for three new projects related to developing production process technologies for magnesium-based raw materials using domestic available resources such as dolomite. This year, 3.15 billion KRW will be invested.
For the development of high value-added applied products using domestically produced magnesium-based ceramic raw materials, up to 4.7 billion KRW will be supported over five years (950 million KRW in 2021) for related new projects.
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