Start with something you did not know
Then go anywhere →Everything is one chain
All supply chains →The same nine stages sit behind almost every physical product. Click any stage to see what lives there.
And here is that same chain with real places in it
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.
Zirconium
A metal that barely absorbs neutrons, which is why nuclear fuel rods are wrapped in it, and whose sand form is a foundry and…
Erbium
The rare earth that amplifies light inside a fibre-optic cable without ever turning it back into electricity.
Niobium
A metal that makes steel much stronger when added in tiny amounts — a few hundred grams per tonne changes the whole alloy.
Palladium
Platinum's cheaper cousin for most of the twentieth century, then briefly more expensive than gold because petrol cars need it.
Gallium
A silvery metal that melts in your hand, and the basis of the compound semiconductors in fast chargers, radar and LEDs.
Caesium
The softest metal, liquid on a warm day, and the element that defines the second.
Lithium
A soft, silvery metal so light it floats on water, and the element that lets a rechargeable battery store a lot of energy for…
Tungsten
The metal with the highest melting point of them all — you can heat it to 3,400 C before it turns liquid.
Three ways in
Latest reporting
All news →Headlines and summaries from named publishers, each linking back to the original. We do not republish articles.
White Hydrogen Drilling Push Gains Momentum Across Three Continents
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Tungsten surge transforms Northcliff’s Sisson economics
The open-pit operation would produce 598,000mtu of tungsten trioxide annually, plus 4.2 million lb. of molybdenum.
SW US mine rush collides with water limits
Washington’s push to mine more copper and lithium in the U.S. Southwest is running into a harder limit than permitting: whether projects can secure enough water to operate for decades...…
SW US CEO chat: Gunnison Copper seeks government cash and partner
Gunnison Copper’s (TSX: GCU; US-OTC: GCUMF) role in helping reduce U.S. dependence on imported red metal now turns more on how it’s financed than on the rocks in Arizona. Backed... The post…
SW US mine rush collides with water limits
The gap between a legal right and a secure physical supply is becoming more apparent in the US critical mineral production.
End of a dollar-centered world nears, gold to replace some bonds, fund manager says
We're in a very early part of a generational boom market in commodities, says Willem Middelkoop.
US Forest Service signs off on South32 Hermosa’s mine plan in Arizona
Hermosa hosts one of the world’s largest undeveloped zinc deposits, a battery-grade manganese deposit and the emerging Peak copper discovery.
Tungsten surge transforms Northcliff’s Sisson economics
Northcliff Resources’ (TSX: NCF; US-OTC: NCFFF) new feasibility study for the Sisson tungsten-molybdenum project in New Brunswick puts its post-tax value at more than four times the cost to…