**1. Introduction**

The need for weight-saving in the automotive and mass transportation sector, like trains and civil airplanes, has historically pushed the usage of magnesium, which, for shared knowledge, is the metallic material at the lowest density, nearly to dense polymers. But, much more effectively, magnesium alloys are characterized by very high specific strength. A long tradition and past knowledge of the magnesium industry accumulated from the 1970s till its Golden Age in the early

1980s. In those years, you could buy primary magnesium at its lowest price on the marketplace, and many bet that the turn against rival aluminum was just around the corner. However, the forecast high growth rate of the magnesium market has not succeeded yet.

Today, you can hear about big worries about magnesium:


You could also add to the list a poor knowledge of the wrought alloys and their deformation processes and concerns about their poor corrosion and creep resistance. Those barriers prevented magnesium from competing with its main rival in weightsaving strategies in the transport sector, the aluminum metal. In the following, we try to give readers a more detailed view, considering that we have to know what we were in the past to get a keen comprehension of today's concerns.

Most concerns about the magnesium market do not depend on geographical lack of raw material. Still, trade issues, production base, and export policies made primary production in Europe not competitive. The last primary production plant in Europe shut down in 2001 since European-based smelters could not compete with low-cost Chinese production. As a result, the availability of primary material is a genuine concern, as European demand depends mainly on China's imports. Therefore, one main drawback for broader use in the automotive industry is the lack of a solid supply base with stable prices over a medium-term period combined with competitive magnesium production outside China. The last primary production plant in Europe shut down in 2001 since European-based smelters could not compete with low-cost Chinese production. As a result, the availability of primary material is a genuine concern, as European demand depends mainly on China's imports. Therefore, one main drawback for broader use in the automotive industry is the lack of a solid supply base with stable prices over a medium-term period combined with competitive magnesium production outside China. But few people know which milestones were in the history of the magnesium market. Why did magnesium growth not meet reasonable expectations? Why did the material price increase and fluctuate after prolonged stability at the lowest price level targeted in the 1980s, the years of maximum Western production? What shaped today's market structure based on perilous dependency on Chinese producers? In the following, we'll try to give you a compass to never get lost in such a multifaced and complex market.
