Start with something you did not know
Then go anywhere →
100%
of the world's gallium comes out of China
Mine production, 2025 · USGS
88%
of the world's bismuth comes out of China
Mine production, 2025 · USGS
87%
of the world's silicon comes out of China
Mine production, 2025 · USGS
14
materials the United States imports every single gram of
Net import reliance, 2025 · USGS
27
materials nobody mines on purpose — they arrive as somebody else's by-product
Editorial classification
1,000,000 litres
becomes 8 kg of contained lithium
Worked example · follow it step by step
1,000 tonnes
becomes 1.6 tonnes of finished sintered magnet
Worked example · follow it step by step
1,000 tonnes
becomes 250 tonnes of primary aluminium
Worked example · follow it step by step
200 tonnes
becomes 25 tonnes of enriched fuel
Worked example · follow it step by step
0.2–0.3 kg
of neodymium in one NdFeB Permanent Magnet, per kg of finished magnet
Indicative range · see the basis
100–200 kg
of neodymium in one Direct-Drive Offshore Wind Turbine, per MW of capacity
Indicative range · see the basis
6–9 kg
of lithium in one NMC Lithium-Ion Battery, per 75 kWh pack
Indicative range · see the basis
Everything is one chain
All supply chains →The same nine stages sit behind almost every physical product. Here they are for copper — click any stage to see what lives there.
-
01Raw material
What it is and where it sits in the ground
Copper in the ground — here as green malachite
-
02Deposit
The mineral that actually carries it
Chalcopyrite, the most important copper ore
-
03Mine
Who digs it up, and how
Escondida, Chile — the world's largest copper mine by output
-
04Processing
Crushing, floating, smelting
Froth flotation lifts copper minerals out of ground rock
-
05Refining
Getting to a usable purity
Copper anodes on their way to the refinery
-
06Component
The part it becomes
Copper windings inside an electric motor
-
07Product
The thing you can buy
An electric car
-
08End market
Who needs it and why
Power grids
-
09Company
Who owns the assets
BHP's headquarters in Melbourne — BHP operates Escondida
One tonne of copper, from a Chilean pit to a wire — 0.5% ore, a smelter on another continent, and the gold and tellurium that fall out on the way. Follow it →
Follow one consignment, border by border
All journeys →Venezuelan extra-heavy crude and Saudi Arab Light are both "oil", and only one of them can be refined almost anywhere. Pick a material, pick where it came out of the ground, and watch who holds it at every border.
Venezuelan extra-heavy crude to diesel, asphalt and aluminium anodes
Oil so thick it will not flow down a pipe, and cannot be refined by most refineries on Earth.
Saudi Arab Light to petrol, almost anywhere
The same commodity, a fraction of the effort — because of what the molecule is.
Alberta oil sands: mined like ore, refined like oil
The only oil in the world that is dug up with a shovel and graded like an orebody.
Chilean brine to a battery in a car
The ore is water. The first year and a half of processing is done by the sun, for free.
Australian spodumene to a battery, the fast way
Eight weeks instead of eighteen months, at the cost of a great deal more energy.
New Caledonian laterite to stainless steel
An island that smelts its own ore, and pays for it with the most expensive electricity in the industry.
Indonesian laterite to a battery cathode
A country that banned raw ore exports and built the processing industry instead.
Chilean sulfide concentrate to Chinese cathode to a wire
Chile mines the most copper in the world. China refines the most. Those are not the same sentence.
Or take the same chains without the borders
Materials the world is short of
The full critical minerals list →Criticality flag as designated in the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. Leading-producer shares are 2025 estimates from the same source.
Yttrium
Counted as a rare earth even though it sits elsewhere on the periodic table, because it behaves like one and is found with them.
Barite
A very heavy, soft mineral used mostly to weigh down drilling mud so an oil well does not blow out.
Europium
The rare earth that glows red under ultraviolet light, and which for decades put the red in every colour television.
Beryllium
A very light, very stiff metal that is transparent to X-rays and dangerous to breathe as dust.
Tellurium
A brittle, silvery element recovered from the slime at the bottom of a copper refinery tank, and the basis of one of the two…
Praseodymium
Neodymium's near-twin, so alike that magnet makers usually do not bother separating the two and sell them together as didymium.
Palladium
Platinum's cheaper cousin for most of the twentieth century, then briefly more expensive than gold because petrol cars need it.
Bauxite
A reddish soil-like rock, formed where tropical rain has rotted rock for millions of years, and the only ore aluminium is made…
Three ways in
Play with the numbers
A million electric cars would take 4.4% of a year of world graphite production.
Pick any technology and any quantity, and see the material bill against world supply.
Open the calculator →
See the whole board
77 elements are traded commodities. The rest of the periodic table is not.
Which elements the economy actually uses — and, just as usefully, which it does not.
Open the periodic table →
Just ask
“Which countries control cobalt production?”
Answered only from this site, with the reference period and the pages it came from. It will not guess.
Ask the Data →
Latest reporting
All news →Headlines and summaries from named publishers, each linking back to the original. We do not republish articles.
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Indian Refiner BPCL Buys U.S. WTI Crude Oil Cargo
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Rio Tinto backs $20 million effort to stop Pilbara cane toads
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ADNOC Gas to Supply LNG to TotalEnergies Under Five-Year Deal
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UK and EU agree draft deal to scrap Brexit red tape over food exports
The food deal, ahead of a UK-EU summit later this month, is the most significant part of the so-called Brexit reset agreed so far.
Shell Sells North West Shelf LNG Stake to Abu Dhabi's XRG for $1.45 Billion
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Photographs on this page · 50
- TWIN-BUTTES MINE. AERIAL OF OPEN PIT MINE, 1,000 FEET DEEP. (FROM THE D… · Cornelius M. Keyes · Public domain
- Big truck looks small in an open pit mine.jpg · Rob and Stephanie Levy from Townsville, Australia · CC BY 2.0
- Quartz, malachite.jpg · Géry PARENT · Public domain
- Chalcopyrite, Quartz, Siderite. Friedrich Wilhelm mine, Herdorf, Westph… · Raimond Spekking · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Escondida Copper Mine, Atacama Desert, Chile 2009-12-09 lrg.jpg · The image was taken by the the Expedition 22 crew. · Public domain
- Prominenthill-flotation.jpg · Geomartin · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Train with anodes in Pori (1).jpg · Joe K. · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Stator Winding of a BLDC Motor.jpg · Medvedev · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Electric car charging at a station during the day with the charging cab… · Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0
- Transmission tower of a high-voltage overhead powerlines File 022.jpg · Novoklimov · CC BY 4.0
- 171 Collins Street Melbourne.jpg · HappyWaldo · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Orinoco Oil Belt.png · Christopher J. Schenk · Public domain
- Saudi Aramco oil pipe lines,Jubail - panoramio.jpg · Suresh Babunair · CC BY 3.0
- Members of Medical Survey Gorup watch shovel in operation loading overb… · Russell Lee · Public domain
- Lithium Ponds of Chile's Salar de Atacama (SVS15006).jpg · NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio - SSAI/R… · Public domain
- Brockman 4 open pit after blast, September 2018.jpg · Calistemon · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Camp minier goro nouvelle caledonie.jpg · Barsamuphe · CC BY 3.0
- A part of nickel industry in Kolaka, South East Sulawesi Province.jpg · Famhar1968 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Chuquicamata copper mine - Chuquicamata-Kupfermine.jpg · Alexander Gerst · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Plastic bottle containing gallium metal.JPG · Pixelmaniac pictures ( Leave a reply ) · CC0
- Bismuth crystal Créer le cristal n01.jpg · Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart · CC BY 4.0
- Wafer 20110212.jpg · Sangitiana Fararano · CC BY-SA 2.0
- CSIRO ScienceImage 8217 A bulk carrier entering Port Hunter Newcastle N… · Nick Pitsas, CSIRO · CC BY 3.0
- Rb5.JPG · Dnn87 · CC BY 3.0
- Electric car charging point, Wetherby service station (30th November 20… · Mtaylor848 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Wheel hub motor of an electric kick scooter, sidepanel removed (2022).jpg · Andrez1 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Detailed view of a cross-section of a modern window frame shows multipl… · Shixart1985 · CC BY 2.0
- Clementine reactor core.jpg · E. T. Jurney · Public domain
- 4 Neodymium magnets from hard disks-6175.jpg · Raimond Spekking · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Nacelle of Wind Turbine 01.jpg · Σ64 · CC BY 4.0
- Lithium Ion Battery Cell - Cylindrical Cell, Prismatic Cell, Pouch Cell.png · CRBAman · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Piece of Yttrium.jpg · Jan Anskeit · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Barite - Cerro Warihuyn, Miraflores, Huamalies, Huanuco, Peru.jpg · Ivar Leidus · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Europium prvek.jpg · Milda 444 · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Crystal surface of colorless Beryl, multicolor filter, size 5,8 x 3,9 mm.jpg · Sepelinmurskaaja · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Tellurium crystals.jpg · Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements · CC BY 3.0
- Praseodymium (Element - 59) 2.jpg · James St. John · CC BY 2.0
- Palladium (Element - 46) 2.jpg · James St. John · CC BY 2.0
- Pisolitic bauxite (Alcoa Bauxite Mine, Arkansas, USA) 5.jpg · James St. John · CC BY 2.0
- Minerals in the Indian Museum, Kolkata 05.jpg · Kritzolina · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Naturalis Biodiversity Center - Museum - Exhibition Nature theatre 06 -… · Photographer: Henk Caspers/Naturalis · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Drill core repository - Geological and Mining Institute of Spain 03.JPG · PePeEfe · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Pumpjacks.JPG · Arne Hückelheim · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Syncrude oil sands mine works, Mildred Lake, Alberta.jpg · Dicklyon · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Native silver 1.jpg · Parent Géry · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Spodumene Nuristan Créer le cristal.jpg · Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart · CC BY 4.0
- Krolewska Huta Prezydent mine headframe.jpg · Aleksander Siermontowski (1889-1942) · Public domain
- 2023-05-20 02 LNG tanker, GULF ENERGY - IMO 7390143.jpg · Gordon Leggett · CC BY-SA 4.0
- World mirror relief map ru.png · World_mirror_relief_map.png : Das steinerne Her… · CC BY-SA 3.0
- Photovoltaic Panels Reap Solar Energy on Farms (20240809-USDA-RD-DCK-03… · USDAgov · Public domain
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