Thus, we developed a process of co-precipitation under continuous flow conditions in a meso-scale reactor, as a two-step (precipitation-aging) process of synthesis of doped catalysts precursors, where the step of aging can also be realised as a continuous process. This synthesis modification was sufficient to significantly reduce variance in the structural properties of the synthesised materials, and this allowed us, for the first time, to carefully examine the mechanism of formation of the pore structure of the doped Mg-Al hydrotalcites as a function of the composition change. We focused on the systematic study of the synthesis of natural Mg-Al LDHs doped with a range of transition metals, which is an important system in the field of heterogeneous catalysis. To the best of our knowledge there are no reports of such systematic studies for natural Mg-Al LDHs that allow mechanistic insights into the formation of the pore structure of these materials. This synthesis method is likely to have a significant impact on development of new catalysts: an example is the very recent work published by our collaborating group, who adopted our synthesis method for preparation of new active catalysts for a cleaner energy solution .