Finding the chokepoint
A supply chain's true constraint is rarely the most obvious bottleneck. Here is how to locate the stage that actually sets…
The battery supply chain end to end
From a lithium brine pond in the Atacama to an EV on a European road, battery materials cross four continents and one…
The magnet supply chain end to end
Mining rare earths outside China addresses only the first of five distinct steps needed to put a finished permanent magnet…
What a chip is made of
A modern logic chip draws on dozens of elements, each refined to purities that would have seemed impossible a generation…
Substitution: the quiet force
When engineers replace a metal in a product, the effects travel upstream through the supply chain to the mines that depend…
Stockpiles and strategic reserves
Stockpiles and strategic reserves explained: who holds them, how they work, and what they cannot do when supply chains…
What is a mineral?
Rock, mineral, ore, metal — four words that are often muddled. Here is what each one means and why the difference matters.
What is an ore?
Some rock contains enough metal to be worth mining; nearly identical rock nearby does not. The difference is what makes an…
Where do metals come from?
Most of Earth's metals were forged in dying stars and then sorted by geology into rare, rich pockets we call ore deposits.
How a mine works
Follow the journey from blasting rock underground to loading a truck at the gate, with plain explanations of every step in…
Why we cannot just recycle everything
Recycling is real and useful, but it cannot grow the total stock of a material — and a growing world always needs more…
What is a supply chain?
A supply chain is every step a material takes from the ground to your hands — and the weakest link is rarely the mine…
The main kinds of ore deposit
From copper porphyries to beach placers, seven deposit types explain where most of the world's metals and minerals come…
How a porphyry copper deposit forms
Porphyry copper deposits form when magma stalls beneath a volcano and releases metal-rich fluids into the surrounding rock…
What weathering does to an orebody
How millions of years of rain and heat strip rock apart, leaving behind concentrated deposits of nickel, bauxite and…
Brines, salars and evaporites
Lithium, potash, boron and iodine concentrate in ancient lake beds and brines. Solar evaporation does most of the…
Banded iron formations
Banded iron formations are ancient seafloor sediments that record Earth's first oxygenated oceans and now supply most of…
How a deposit is found
From the first magnetic anomaly to the first ore tonne: how geologists narrow a planet's worth of rock to a single mine.
How metals are priced
Metals are priced in three distinct ways — exchange trading, benchmark negotiation, and price assessment — each suited to…
Reserves are not resources
Reserve and resource mean precisely defined things in mining codes. Confusing them distorts every supply calculation built…
Reading a technical report
What JORC and NI 43-101 actually mean, and how to read the resource and reserve categories quoted in technical reports.
Cost curves and who survives a downturn
Why the same metal price that bankrupts one mine leaves another comfortably profitable, explained through cost curves and…
What makes a mineral 'critical'
How governments classify minerals as 'critical', why their lists diverge, and what the label actually changes in practice.
Export controls and resource nationalism
How export bans, quotas, licences and processing requirements reshape mineral supply chains — and what each tool actually…
Open pit or underground?
How mining engineers decide between digging down from the surface or tunnelling underground, and what drives the switch…
Grade, cut-off and why they move
Grade measures how much metal sits in a tonne of rock. Cut-off grade decides whether that rock is worth mining at all — and…
Mining without digging
How in-situ recovery and heap leaching extract metal by dissolving it underground or in engineered piles, without…
Artisanal and small-scale mining
Millions of people mine by hand, supplying a significant share of some critical materials. Here is what that means for the…
The life of a mine
From first rock sample to final rehabilitation, a mine takes decades to build, run and close — here is why that timeline is…
Tailings and waste rock
Most of what a mine digs up is not the product. This article explains where that material goes and why it matters.
Crushing, grinding and flotation
How rock becomes concentrate: the crushing, grinding and flotation steps that turn low-grade ore into a saleable product.
Smelting and refining
How metal concentrate is converted to refined metal through smelting and refining, and what by-products emerge along the…
Leaching and hydrometallurgy
How acid, pressure and solvent extraction dissolve and separate metals from ore — the core steps of hydrometallurgical…
Separating the rare earths
Rare earth elements share nearly identical chemistry, making separation one of the most stage-intensive processes in…
What purity actually means
Purity grades in materials processing run from commercial to nine-nines. Each extra nine reshapes cost, process design, and…
By-products and companion metals
Most metals never have their own mines. Understanding why reveals how supply chains for dozens of elements actually work.
Battery chemistries, compared
NMC, LFP and sodium-ion batteries each draw on a different set of minerals. Here is what that means for the mines behind…
How a permanent magnet works
Permanent magnets store invisible force in their atomic structure. Here is why some do it a thousand times better than…
What a solar panel is made of
A standard solar panel is mostly glass and aluminium, but the materials that make it work — silicon and silver — tell a…
The nuclear fuel cycle
From powdered yellowcake to ceramic fuel pellet, the nuclear fuel cycle passes through chemistry, enrichment and…
Electrolysers and the iridium problem
PEM and alkaline electrolysers split water in different ways, and their contrasting material needs shape where green…
Making steel without coal
How steelmakers are replacing coking coal with hydrogen and electricity, and why the world's scrap supply sets a hard limit…