Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Plant | Kind | Stage | Country | Operator | Materials |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlantic Copper Smelter, Huelva Huelva | Smelter | Processing | Spain | Atlantic Copper (Freeport-McMoRan) | Copper, Gold, Selenium, Silver, Sulfur |
| Bayer-Process Alumina Refineries, Western Australia Kwinana, Pinjarra, Wagerup | Refinery | Processing | Australia | Alcoa of Australia | Alumina, Bauxite, Gallium |
| Guixi Smelter Guixi, Jiangxi | Smelter | Processing | China | Jiangxi Copper | Copper, Gold, Silver, Tellurium |
| Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park Morowali, Central Sulawesi | Smelter | Processing | Indonesia | Tsingshan and partners | Cobalt, Nickel |
| Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant Norilsk | Smelter | Processing | Russia | Nornickel | Copper, Nickel, Palladium, Platinum |
| Port Hedland Pilbara, Western Australia | Port | Processing | Australia | Pilbara Ports with BHP, FMG and Roy Hill | Iron Ore |
| Port of Rotterdam Bulk Terminals Rotterdam | Port | Processing | Netherlands | Multiple terminal operators | Bauxite, Copper, Iron Ore, Metallurgical Coal |
| Ganzhou Rare Earth Cluster Ganzhou, Jiangxi | Separation plant | Refining | China | China Rare Earth Group and affiliates | Dysprosium, Rare Earths (all), Terbium, Yttrium |
| Georges Besse II Enrichment Plant Tricastin, Drôme | Enrichment plant | Refining | France | Orano | Uranium |
| Hemlock Semiconductor Polysilicon Plant Hemlock, Michigan | Chemical plant | Refining | United States | Hemlock Semiconductor | High-Purity Quartz, Silicon |
| Huayou Cobalt Refineries Tongxiang, Zhejiang | Chemical plant | Refining | China | Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt | Cobalt, Nickel |
| Jinchuan Group Smelter-Refinery Jinchang, Gansu | Refinery | Refining | China | Jinchuan Group | Cobalt, Copper, Nickel, Platinum |
| Kwinana Lithium Hydroxide Plant Kwinana, Western Australia | Chemical plant | Refining | Australia | Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia / IGO | Lithium |
| Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, Kuantan Gebeng, Pahang | Separation plant | Refining | Malaysia | Lynas Rare Earths | Cerium, Lanthanum, Neodymium, Praseodymium… |
| Mountain Pass Separation & Metal Plant California | Separation plant | Refining | United States | MP Materials | Neodymium, Praseodymium, Rare Earths (all) |
| Neo Performance Materials, Sillamäe Sillamäe | Separation plant | Refining | Estonia | Neo Performance Materials | Lanthanum, Neodymium, Rare Earths (all) |
| Port Hope Conversion Facility Port Hope, Ontario | Chemical plant | Refining | Canada | Cameco | Fluorspar, Uranium |
| Qinghai & Sichuan Lithium Chemical Cluster Qinghai and Sichuan | Chemical plant | Refining | China | Ganfeng, Tianqi and others | Lithium |
| Rustenburg Base & Precious Metals Refineries Rustenburg, North West | Refinery | Refining | South Africa | Anglo American Platinum / Sibanye-Stillwater | Iridium, Nickel, Palladium, Platinum, Rhodium… |
| Xinjiang & Inner Mongolia Polysilicon Cluster Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia | Chemical plant | Refining | China | Multiple producers | Silicon |
| CATL Ningde Plants Ningde, Fujian | Gigafactory | Component | China | Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) | Copper, Graphite, Lithium, Phosphate Rock |
| Chinese NdFeB Magnet Cluster Ningbo, Baotou, Ganzhou | Magnet plant | Component | China | JL MAG, Zhongke Sanhuan and others | Boron, Dysprosium, Iron Ore, Neodymium… |
| Gigafactory Nevada Storey County, Nevada | Gigafactory | Component | United States | Tesla with Panasonic Energy | Aluminium, Cobalt, Copper, Graphite, Lithium… |
| Samsung Pyeongtaek Campus Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi | Semiconductor fab | Component | South Korea | Samsung Electronics | Copper, Helium, Silicon, Tungsten |
| TSMC Fab 18, Tainan Southern Taiwan Science Park, Tainan | Semiconductor fab | Component | Taiwan | TSMC | Cobalt, Copper, Hafnium, Helium, High-Purity… |
| Aero-Engine Turbine Plant, Derby Derby, England | Manufacturing plant | Product | United Kingdom | Rolls-Royce | Cobalt, Hafnium, Nickel, Rhenium, Tantalum… |
| Wind Turbine Nacelle & Blade Plants, Jutland Ringkøbing and Lem, Jutland | Manufacturing plant | Product | Denmark | Vestas Wind Systems | Boron, Copper, Dysprosium, Iron & Steel… |
Browse by picture
Atlantic Copper Smelter, Huelva
A smelter's real product list is longer than copper: sulfuric acid, gold, silver, selenium and platinum-group metals…
Bayer-Process Alumina Refineries, Western Australia
Bauxite goes in, alumina powder and red mud come out. The residue is the largest single waste stream in the metals…
Guixi Smelter
More than half of world copper smelting capacity is in China, which means concentrate from Chile and Peru is mostly…
Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park
Indonesia banned raw nickel ore exports and this park is the result: a self-contained city of smelters, power plants…
Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant
Ore mined above the Arctic Circle is smelted on site because shipping raw ore out of Norilsk is impossible for most…
Port Hedland
Almost everything that leaves here is iron ore, loaded from trains up to 2.5 km long onto ships bound for Asian steel…
Port of Rotterdam Bulk Terminals
Ports are where a supply chain becomes visible: iron ore, bauxite, coal and concentrate all arrive as bulk cargo and…
Ganzhou Rare Earth Cluster
Separating dysprosium and terbium from the other rare earths is chemically the hardest step in the magnet chain, and…
Georges Besse II Enrichment Plant
Centrifuge enrichment raises uranium-235 from 0.7% to 3-5% for power reactors. The technology is dual-use and…
Hemlock Semiconductor Polysilicon Plant
Semiconductor-grade polysilicon is purified to eleven nines — one impurity atom in a hundred billion. Solar-grade…
Huayou Cobalt Refineries
Roughly three-quarters of world cobalt refining is in China, regardless of where the ore was mined. Refining, not…
Jinchuan Group Smelter-Refinery
Jinchuan grew around a single nickel sulfide orebody and became one of the world's largest refiners of cobalt it does…
Kwinana Lithium Hydroxide Plant
Building conversion capacity next to the mine was meant to be the obvious move. Kwinana showed how hard it is…
Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, Kuantan
Ore from Mount Weld in Australia is cracked with sulfuric acid and separated here through hundreds of…
Mountain Pass Separation & Metal Plant
Rebuilding separation at the mine site closed the gap that had made the only US rare-earth mine dependent on Chinese…
Neo Performance Materials, Sillamäe
A Soviet-era uranium and rare-earth plant on the Baltic coast, now the main European separator of rare-earth oxides.
Port Hope Conversion Facility
Between the mine and the reactor, uranium has to become uranium hexafluoride so it can be enriched. Only a handful of…
Qinghai & Sichuan Lithium Chemical Cluster
Australia mines the most lithium; China converts the most. Spodumene concentrate is shipped thousands of kilometres…
Rustenburg Base & Precious Metals Refineries
Separating six chemically similar precious metals from one concentrate takes months of solvent extraction and…
Xinjiang & Inner Mongolia Polysilicon Cluster
Solar polysilicon migrated to wherever electricity is cheapest, because the Siemens process that makes it is…
CATL Ningde Plants
CATL's scale is the reason lithium iron phosphate went from a second-tier chemistry to the majority of new cells…
Chinese NdFeB Magnet Cluster
Between separated oxide and a working motor sits magnet making: alloy strip casting, hydrogen decrepitation, jet…
Gigafactory Nevada
A cell factory is where materials stop being commodities and become a product: cathode powder, graphite anode, copper…
Samsung Pyeongtaek Campus
Memory chips are made by the billion, which makes them the most material-hungry part of the chip industry by volume.
TSMC Fab 18, Tainan
A leading-edge fab consumes ultrapure silicon wafers, dozens of specialty gases including neon and helium, tungsten…
Aero-Engine Turbine Plant, Derby
A high-pressure turbine blade is a single crystal of nickel superalloy containing rhenium, hafnium and tantalum…
Wind Turbine Nacelle & Blade Plants, Jutland
A single offshore turbine contains several tonnes of permanent magnet material, tens of tonnes of copper, and a blade…