Reading options

🧭 Guided View New to this — ore grades, concentrate, refining, by-products? We explain every term as you browse, in plain English. Same data, with the help built in.

⚡ Expert View You already know the industry. Just the data — clean, fast and compact, with no extra explanations. This is the default view.

Theme

Interface language

Depth Material pages are written at four levels. Pick one on any material page and it is remembered.

★ Saved Research & data

The rock itself

Ore minerals

A metal is not found as metal. It is locked in a specific mineral, at a specific concentration, in a specific kind of rock — and which mineral it is decides how it must be mined and processed.

Azurite-malachite-specimen Mineral specimen featuring azuri… · Δανάη Κωτσιομύτη · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Apatite

The phosphate mineral of both igneous rock and your own teeth. Sedimentary phosphorite is the ore actually mined.

PhosphateCa5(PO4)3(F,Cl,OH)

Monazite

A rare-earth phosphate found in heavy mineral sands. Carries thorium, so it is radioactive enough to be regulated.

Phosphate(Ce,La,Nd,Th)PO4

Xenotime

A yttrium phosphate that also carries the heavy rare earths — dysprosium, terbium, erbium — that magnets need.

PhosphateYPO4

Ore minerals

Apatite

Monazite

Xenotime

Materials

The ground

The economy

Learn

About us