Raw materials associated with extractive industry: an overview

Globalization, growth in consumption levels and emerging economies such as China and India has led to increasing concerns about the availability of specific mineral raw materials. These resources are finite and rapidly depleting; in the meantime, demand continues to increase. This results in the overall increase in the value of mineral raw material and in the subsequent dramatic price spikes and fluctuations. Therefore, resource security is now a priority for governments of developed countries. The security of supply of the so-called ‘critical’ raw materials (CRM), with rare earths (REE) has attracted the greatest attention in the press. The “criticality” concept is based on the combination of economic importance and supply risk for the Mineral Raw Materials (MRM). The EU relies on extra European countries for the vast majority of their critical raw materials (CRM) supply, putting manufacturing and industrial activities within the EU at risk and causing high economic dependence on non-EU countries. On the other hand, these factors drive a need for new sources of mineral raw materials, and, on the other, a need for the EU to reduce its reliance on global imports of such materials and to become more independent.