What is it?
A needle-shaped white mineral used as a safe replacement for asbestos fibre in brakes, boards and plastics.
Why does it matter?
Its acicular crystals reinforce a composite the way a fibre does, without the health consequences that ended asbestos.
Deeper written sections for this material have not been published yet. Everything below is drawn straight from the source datasets and is complete.
Who produces it
See it on a map →Mine production
Mine productionmetric tons 2025 (estimated) World total 860,000 metric tons
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · Gross weight of concentrate. · source ↗
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Country | Production | Share of world |
|---|---|---|
| China | 600,000 | 69.8% |
| India | 120,000 | 14.0% |
| Mexico | 100,000 | 11.6% |
| Canada | 30,000 | 3.5% |
| Other countries | 11,000 | 1.3% |
| United States | Withheld | — |
| World total | 860,000 | 100% |
“Withheld” means the USGS suppressed the figure to avoid disclosing an individual company's data — it does not mean zero. Country rows do not always sum to the world total because the source rounds each figure independently and does not always break out an “other countries” line.