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Li Auto and Duoli Technology have trial-produced a magnesium-alloy rear Gigacasting at Duoli’s Jintan die-casting shop in Changzhou. During the ceremony for the first sample; a large magnesium rear underbody was unveiled.

From project kickoff to the finished sample took about three months for mold development, equipment debug, and process validation. The cell pairs a Bühler 9,200 t die-casting machine with a dedicated magnesium melting and pouring system, framed as handling magnesium melt oxidation and burn risk on large thin-wall structures. At the 2026 Shanghai International Die Casting Exhibition, Beijing Li Auto and Changzhou Duoli jointly entered the part and won the organizer’s “gold casting” award.

This is a second major China magnesium rear-underbody path after Changan and Baowu Magnesium’s trial rear Gigacasting. Duoli’s aluminum Gigacasting track is already on the record with several customers including Li Auto, Nio and Leapmotor, with a recent new order for Bühler and 10 machines installed.

All Chinese Magnesium Gigacasting Developments tracked in The Gigacasting Database and Chinese Market Report along with an analysis and explanation on why the push for magnesium is here to stay in the long term.

Romanian Mineral Proiect Invest (MPI) has obtained a concession licence to mine magnesite rock at Valea Dobra, near Rășinari in Sibiu County. The licence order is dated 3 September 2026 and was published in the Monitorul Oficial on 7 September.

The pitch is an integrated EU project: crush on site, then process high-purity Mg(OH)₂ and MgO at a plant planned in Săliște. The deposit is cited at more than 50 Mt; staged investment is put at more than €400 million.

First stage, per the company, is opening the mine and building the Săliște works.
The ore extracted at Valea Dobra will be crushed and transported to the Saliste plant. There will be processed into hydroxide and high purity magnesium oxide. The products are intended for the construction, cables, plastics and metallurgy industries.

In the next stages, the company also takes into account the production of metal magnesium. Environmental assessment and construction approvals are still pending.

This is Europe’s latest try at domestic magnesium feedstock. I have covered the US side of that same story through many startups and established companies expanding their horizons.

Those steps still sit far ahead of any Romanian metal path. Against that backdrop, China’s primary magnesium output remains the scale reference: 391,200 tons in the first four months of 2026 alone.

Source: Gândul.

Latrobe Magnesium reports overall Phase 1B construction at its Latrobe Valley Stage 1 Demonstration Plant in Victoria, Australia is now about 70% complete. Up from roughly 50% five weeks earlier, with first magnesium metal still targeted for H2 2026.

The plant sits in Gippsland’s brown-coal power precinct and is designed to extract magnesium metal, plus cementitious and other by-products, from industrial ash, a waste stream from brown-coal generation.

Briquetting installation is complete: Rockwell Automation finished Site Acceptance Testing, major equipment has been energised and tested, and the area is ready for staged commissioning. The Quicklime area is 100% complete. The Reduction Furnace remains on the critical path, with an estimated four to five weeks of installation left and specialist retort supporting pier-rail work scheduled for the second half of September.

Early staged commissioning is targeted to start in the next reporting period as the project moves from installation into Latrobe’s five-stage commissioning process. The company is still guiding to demonstration-plant metal in the second half of the calendar year, not production yet.

Seres’s body-development core team recently visited ChenZhi Lightweight, Changan’s lightweighting subsidiary, viewed a magnesium back-door (tailgate) assembly sample, and the two sides reached a preliminary cooperation intent on magnesium structural parts for New Energy Vehicles (NEVs).

The exchange covered NEV magnesium body structural parts, new materials R&D, semi-solid die casting, assembly, and corrosion protection, plus performance targets, mass-production process, cost control, corrosion solutions, and vehicle fit. No named programme, volumes, or award were disclosed, only a sample viewed and preliminary intent.

ChenZhi is the same Changan subsidiary I’ve tracked on magnesium tailgate structures: It built in--house the mold for the tailgate and made it on a 5,000T die casting machine equipped with a Thixomolding TPI module.

This is the liftgate which was the subject of the visit, 1,487 × 1,263 mm, 263 mm, nine sheet-metal parts into one, 45% lighter than steel at 7.58 kg.

On 9 September, Tianhao New Materials Technology and Haitian Metal signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Tianhao’s first-batch intent is to purchase multiple machines from from 700 to 3,600 tons, with the equipment to be installed, commissioned, and put into production at Tianhao’s new Huizhou plant in the first half of 2027.

In June 2026, Tianhao broke ground on a semi-solid magnesium manufacturing base with a total investment is ¥484 million ($72 million) on a site of 53,700 m²; at full capacity the plant is expected to produce more than 20 million magnesium parts per year.

Tianhao Huizhou’s project is new on my radar; A dedicated semi-solid magnesium foundry booking a multi-machine HMG700–HMG3600 fleet against a 2027 timeline and a clear parts-capacity target. We’ll keep an eye on its development.

For continuous ordered-vs-installed tracking of Chinese magnesium injection molding fleets, the Gigacasting Database remains the place that separates announcements from verified reality.