Research & Development

Over its more than 80 year history SFM has adopted a policy of continuously working with industry experts, centres of excellence and, most importantly, its customers to ensure that its manufacturing processes and finished products are at the cutting edge of the magnesium industry.

Market and customer development projects

SFM's unique combination of experience and production capabilities allows to offer a wide range of research and development.

Alloy development - The development and manufacture of special magnesium cast alloys. Batch sizes range from 50-1000kg lots cast in moulds customised to each customers' requirements.

Powder production - Once alloys have been developed, SFM is able to atomise the alloys to tight particle size distributions.

Powder characterisation - Drawing on our internal laboratory facilities, SFM is able to characterise and certify the chemistry and physical properties of the products that we manufacture.

Recent and ongoing research projects include the following:

Corrosion protective coatings - In reaction to the international community's objective to reduce the use of toxic materials, SFM has been working closely with industry to develop alternatives.

Hydrogen storage - SFM supplies both cast alloys and mechanical powder for large scale energy storage.

Biomedical - SFM is involved with a number of universities and leading research organisations developing magnesium based biodegradable implants.