Development of new materials includes establishing relationships between their different components and the physical and chemical properties pertinent to a particular application. In this work, the relationship between several magnetic nanoproperties of cobalt-zinc ferrite as functions of the contents of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and gadolinium (Gd) are studied using statistically designed experiments. The results point towards the possibility of optimizing the material's coercivity while leaving the rest of the properties statistically unaffected. This study helps to establish the material's feasibility to be used in magneto-caloric applications. © IMechE 2012.