Several peculiarities in the analysis of the markets of rare and scattered metals after 2004

An assessment of the potential for transformational market growth amongst the critical metals

“…The score for these critical metals fall in between aluminium and silver (3.5 points) and gold and nickel (2.5 points). A variety of constraints exist for these metals, with some fundamentally rare in the crust such as mercury, molybdenum and the platinum group metals (Rudnick and Gao 2003), whilst most face extraction constraints in processing (Gupta and Krishnamurthy 2005; Hylander and Meili 2005; King 2005; Veiga et al 2006; Bradsher 2009, 2013; Gao et al 2009; Yaksic and Tilton 2009; Kyle 2010; Mudd 2010; Spiegel and Viega 2010; Thomas and Kelley 2010; Cobalt Development Institute 2011; Conflict Minerals Consortium 2012; Grosjean, Miranda, Perrin and Poggi 2012; Kim and Choi 2012; Massari and Ruberti 2013; Packey 2013; Wubbeke 2013; Campbell 2014; Golev et al 2014; Mudd and Jowitt 2014; Weng et al 2014; USGS 2014, 2015). Metals such as chromium (International Chromium Development Association 2015), magnesium (NRC 2008; Buchert et al 2009; APS and MRS 2011; USDOE 2011; BGS 2012; Schulz and Bradley 2013; EC 2014), niobium (Schwela 2012) and strontium (USGS 2014, 2015) however seem more constrained by demand factors.…”

“…Analysing ease of processing One potential consequence of metals not concentrating easily into deposits in the crust is that end up most frequently being found as by-products and co-products, and less often as the primary product, mitigating against more abundant mining, for both technical and economic reasons (Gupta and Krishnamurthy 2005;Naumov and Grinberg 2009;Alonso et al 2012;Graedel et al 2012;Packey 2012;Mudd et al 2013b;Graedel et al 2015;Werner et al 2015). An example of this would be the rare earth metals, which although as abundant in the crust as the base metals, are not mined anywhere near as greater volume.…”

“…Gallium is one of the most frequently cited critical metals. Tellurium, an important critical metal, faces a slightly unusual situation in that because it is recovered from the slimes of copper smelting-refining it vulnerable to a further increase in the use of solventextraction electrowinning (SXEW) processing, at the expense of the conventional smelter-refiner processing route for copper (Naumov and Grinberg 2009;USGS 2014USGS , 2015.…”

Criticality of Non-Fuel Minerals: A Review of Major Approaches and Analyses

“…We include two studies , that precisely mark the transition from quantitative supply and demand analysis to the newer studies that incorporate more qualitative concepts, but omit two studies , that analyze only one or two raw materials, even though they are rich in detail on the metrics of raw material availability. Several recent studies − that focus on particular issues are recognized in the discussion of selected analytical dimensions. From this literature, we thus focus on ten studies that provide a perspective on approaches to the analysis of raw material criticality (Table ).…”

“…Market imbalances due to company concentration are analyzed by the DOE, EU, and IW Consult studies ,, only. Several sources include price levels and volatility as indicators for the effects of market imbalances (Naumov and Grinberg provide a typology of main product and byproduct material price developments). Two sources account for physical supply restrictions, either human-caused (war in the IDA study) or caused by natural disasters (climate change in the Oakdene Hollins study).…”