CHICAGO – The European Commission has identified 14 mineral raw materials, including several metals and
metal groups, which have high supply risks and could face shortages resulting from limited production sources
and high demand.
An expert group assembled by the Brussels-based commission studied 41 minerals and metals groups to compile
the “critical” supply list. Minerals on the critical list are antimony, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium,
graphite, indium, magnesium, niobium (also known as columbium), platinum group metals (PGMs), rare earths,
tantalum and tungsten.
The experts concluded that demand might more than triple for some of the minerals between 2006 and 2030 and
released forecasts of demand growth from emerging technologies for nine of the minerals as well as silver and
copper. They said the growing demand for raw materials is driven both by the growth of developing economies
and new emerging technologies.
The high supply risk was described as mainly due to the fact that a high share of the worldwide production mainly
comes from a handful of countries including China for antimony, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium,
magnesium, rare earths and tungsten; Russia for PGMs; the Democratic Republic of Congo for cobalt and
tantalum; and Brazil for niobium and tantalum.