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January 28, 2025

MBA GRAD School of Business and Technology

Headshot of Peter Ladwig M'09
Peter Ladwig M’09

Every morning by 8 a.m., Peter Ladwig M’09, Ph.D., and the teams at Niron Magnetics are working toward one goal — commercializing the world’s strongest rare earth free permanent magnet.

The successes this once obscure startup company in Minneapolis have seen have garnered interest across the nation — earning them a spot on TIME Magazine’s 2024 Top Greentech Companies list and TIME’s Best Invention of 2023.

Along with this success comes both excitement and pressure from numerous manufacturers.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is magnets are just about everywhere and in everything. They’re in power tools, in your car … basically anytime you push a button and something moves electronically, there’s probably a magnet involved,” Ladwig said.

What’s concerning, he goes on to explain, is that currently, the world’s strongest magnets are made out of rare earth elements like neodymium and dysprosium, which are not only in short supply but also mining those elements is horrible for the environment.

“Creating 1 kilogram of neodymium creates 1,000 kilograms of waste, so it’s an incredibly wasteful process, and it’s really damaging communities in Asia,” he said. “The other concern is that China controls about 95% of the world’s neodymium supply in one way or another, which is a huge geopolitical risk for the U.S. Those two factors combined result in a very strong interest in the U.S. to develop and commercialize this alternative material.”

In comparison, Niron’s magnet is made from iron and nitrogen. Ladwig adds, “The amount of iron that we use, the amount of scrap iron that is out there and available … Even if we’re wildly successful, we would hardly make a dent in the scrap iron business. There’s just that much out there, and nitrogen is the most plentiful element in the earth’s atmosphere, and that’s all that’s in our magnets. It’s just iron and nitrogen. Most iron nitride compounds are very plentiful and easy to make.

“The specific crystal structure of iron nitride known as ordered tetragonal alpha double prime (notated as α” Fe16N2) is incredibly difficult to make. It’s the exact ordering of nitrogen relative to iron that gives these magnetic properties. This alpha double prime iron nitride has been hypothesized to exist for decades. People could do the calculations and show that if you can make this material, it would have fantastic magnetic properties. So through most of Niron’s existence, we struggled to try to make this material, and then really about the time COVID-19 hits, Niron finally cracks the code and figures out how to make this stuff, and then not only make it, but make it using processes that you can actually scale up and make tons of this stuff with.”

Suddenly, Ladwig said Niron went from being a startup that no one had ever heard of to being very popular.

As vice president of research and development for Niron Magnetics, Ladwig is in charge of nanoparticle development. He works with a team of engineers and scientists from diverse backgrounds as they work to turn these nanoparticles into very large volumes of materials, cost effectively.

“There are engineering challenges left,” Ladwig said. “We say that the science project is largely solved. The engineering project is really underway right now, which is taking what we’ve demonstrated in the lab and scaling it up to progressively larger volumes. We’re getting our commercial pilot plant up and running, and then we’re going to build our first full fullscale manufacturing plant, which will produce 10,000 tons of Clean Earth Magnets each year. To make a notable dent in this industry, you need to make 10,000 tons of magnetic material annually. If we’re actually going to make a difference in the world, we have to make a lot of magnets.

“Building this type of manufacturing, at this scale, takes years, and also a lot of investment from a number of different partners. It’s a multiyear process to go from where we are now to high volume manufacturing.”

Ladwig said getting national attention also comes with a lot of pressure. 

“We have the potential to do a lot of good for the environment by displacing the incumbent technology, and also a lot of good for stability of our way of life in the U.S. by having a stable supply chain of these magnets. The total benefit that this can bring to us as a nation is a lot. And so we’re very, very driven to make this work. Everyone wants it now.”

Ladwig said having his MBA from Saint Mary’s has been particularly useful. In working in a smaller company, you often have to wear a number of hats. Having a knowledge of budgeting, operations management, project management, intellectual property concerns, and finance has been beneficial.

“I knew I needed some education that I didn’t have, and I was already working full time. Saint Mary’s had a program that was just fantastic, where the professors actually came out to our company and taught some classes on site,” he said. “Saint Mary’s really understood that I already was very busy and had a very engaging career and gave me the education that I needed in a way that worked, that otherwise I couldn’t do. And it has really paid dividends now, even though I’ve remained in a technical leadership role.

“The things that I’ve learned from my business law class, from my accounting class, from operations management to project management to finance: This knowledge has helped me translate technical goals to business goals, because ultimately, we’re in a business. The skill set to bridge that gap and communicate with people on both the technical and business sides, really came into play.”

Ladwig said most of his career, he’s made microelectronic devices for hard disc drives or cell phones or medical devices. He felt particularly drawn to an opportunity to work on something that would be a game changer in the world of sustainability.

“I left that industry because this is the one opportunity before I retire, I told myself, this is the one chapter of my life, where I really can make a difference,” he said. “In my past I’ve been fortunate to work on teams that have delivered over a billion components that are critical for many devices we use today. This opportunity can deliver more value to society than all of them combined.

“This is truly a game changer, and I like it for a couple of reasons. It’s good for the environment, it’s good for our country, and I want to deliver something of real scientific advancement in my career, and this checks that box as well.”