u/The-Oregon-Group

• BHP expects the world to use ~50mt of copper a year by mid-century, 2x today's level.
• Alejandro Tapia, who runs Escondida, says that only happens if miners get legal, tax and permitting certainty.
• He pointed to older deposits, deeper pits, higher costs and falling grades across the Chilean industry.
• BHP plans to spend ~$10bn at Escondida over the next 7-8 years, including a concentrator costing >$5bn.

Most people have never heard of tellurium either.

That's becoming a problem.

China produced approximately 750 metric tons of tellurium in 2024, accounting for 76% of the estimated 980 tons produced worldwide. The United States produces copper telluride from two domestic copper refineries — one in Texas, one in Utah — but tellurium was not refined in the United States; copper telluride from both U.S. facilities was exported for further processing. Price WatchPrice Watch

In February 2025, China placed export controls on tellurium alongside tungsten, bismuth, molybdenum and indium.

Same story, different metal. Except tellurium has a wrinkle the others don't.

What is tellurium?

Tellurium is a brittle, silvery-white metalloid with semiconductor properties.

It sits between metals and non-metals on the periodic table, sharing some properties of both. It's relatively rare in the Earth's crust — rarer than gold — but that's not actually why supply is constrained.

More than 90% of tellurium has been produced from anode slimes as a byproduct of electrolytic copper refining, and the remainder was derived from skimmings at lead refineries and from flue dusts and gases generated during the smelting of bismuth, copper, and lead-zinc ores. Price Watch

Like indium, germanium and scandium, tellurium isn't something you can simply mine more of when demand rises. Production is tied to copper. You need copper refineries capable of recovering it from anode slimes, and you need the economics to justify doing so.

Historically, copper refining processes have been optimized exclusively for copper production, and tellurium recovery capabilities have not yet been deployed in many relevant copper processing facilities.

That's a structural constraint that doesn't respond quickly to price signals.

The solar angle

The biggest use for tellurium is cadmium telluride — CdTe — thin-film solar cells.

CdTe solar cells are the second most common photovoltaic technology after crystalline silicon, representing 21% of the U.S. market. First Solar is the dominant manufacturer — the world's largest thin-film PV solar module manufacturer and the largest PV solar module manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere. uspto

Domestic CdTe production is set to exceed 10 gigawatts direct current by the end of 2024 and reach 14 GWdc by 2026, heavily influenced by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which incentivizes domestic PV manufacturing. CleanTechnica

Researchers have described technology and supply chain efforts required to reach worldwide annual CdTe solar PV capacity of 100 GW by 2030.

That's an enormous demand trajectory for a metal produced entirely as a byproduct of copper refining, with 76% of global supply coming from China.

Then there's defense — and this is where it gets interesting

Tellurium occupies an unusual position among critical minerals. The USGS recommended dropping it from the 2025 Critical Minerals List after a quantitative economic screen concluded that recent gains in domestic supply had lowered its risk profile. The Departments of War, Energy, and Agriculture rejected that finding, and the Secretary of the Interior retained tellurium among the 60 minerals on the final list published in November 2025. The reversal rested on the military's reliance on mercury cadmium telluride infrared detectors, for which no ready substitute exists in thermal imaging and missile seekers. Ceramics

Read that again.

The USGS said take it off the critical minerals list. The military said no.

Mercury cadmium telluride — HgCdTe — is the material inside the infrared detectors used in thermal imaging systems and missile seekers. There is no ready substitute. When the Department of Defense overrules the USGS on a minerals designation, that tells you something about how seriously the military takes the supply exposure.

China tightened the controls

On February 4, 2025, China announced it would restrict exports of five critical minerals: tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, indium, and molybdenum, requiring licenses to export 20 related products. Department of Energy

China refines roughly 80% of the world's tellurium and imposed export controls in February 2025 that the November 2025 trade understanding left fully in force, even as Beijing eased parallel restrictions on gallium, germanium, and antimony. Ceramics

That last detail matters. When the US and China reached a partial trade understanding in late 2025, China eased restrictions on several metals. Tellurium wasn't one of them.

Prices responded

At today's price of $243.30 per kg, tellurium is up 66.70% since the start of 2025, up 89.77% since the start of 2024, and up 89.77% since the start of 2022, when the tellurium price stood at $128.21 per kg. U.S. Department of Energy

The price topped $100,000 per metric ton in July of last year and has since settled above $90,000. tradingeconomics

For context, USGS had the average U.S. warehouse price at roughly $75–80 per kilogram in 2023–2024. The move since China's export controls is significant.

Why supply can't simply respond

The obvious question is why copper producers don't just recover more tellurium.

Some are starting to. As tellurium recovery capabilities are introduced and as global copper production changes in the coming years, the availability of tellurium will adjust accordingly.

But this takes time. Retrofitting copper refineries to recover tellurium from anode slimes requires capital investment and process changes at facilities that were never designed with tellurium recovery in mind. And even when recovery infrastructure exists, the amount of tellurium available is still constrained by how much copper is being refined — not by how much tellurium anyone wants.

International buyers, including North American and European solar manufacturers, competed with Chinese domestic consumers for available Chinese tellurium, creating a multi-directional demand surge that overwhelmed the relatively modest supply flows from copper anode slime processing. U.S. Department of Energy

That's the supply-demand trap in one sentence.

The setup

Tellurium sits at the intersection of three powerful demand drivers — solar energy, AI infrastructure build-out, and defense — with supply structurally tied to copper refining and 76–80% of global production concentrated in China.

The USGS wanted it off the critical minerals list. The military said no.

China kept the export controls in place when it eased restrictions on other metals.

Prices are up nearly 90% since 2022.

And the U.S. still doesn't refine tellurium domestically.

You don't need to run out of a commodity for it to become a problem. You just need enough friction in the supply chain at the wrong moment — and tellurium's supply chain has very little room for error right now.

Most people have never heard of indium.

If you're reading this on a flat-panel display, there's a decent chance you're looking through a material made with it.

More importantly, indium is becoming relevant to something much bigger: AI data centers.

Indium is used in displays, touchscreens, semiconductors, fiber-optic communications, solar cells and specialized electronics. China produces roughly 70% of the world's indium. The United States produces essentially no primary refined indium from domestic ores and is 100% net import reliant.

In February 2025, China placed export controls on certain indium-related products.

Another surprisingly small commodity sitting underneath some very large industries.

What exactly is indium?

Indium is a very soft, silvery metal — soft enough to cut with a knife.

It was discovered in 1863 and named after the indigo-blue line observed in its atomic spectrum. For most of its early history nobody had much use for it. One of its first significant applications came during World War II, when indium was used as a coating for bearings in high-performance aircraft engines.

Then electronics changed everything.

The biggest use for indium globally is indium tin oxide — ITO.

ITO has an unusual combination of properties: it conducts electricity while remaining largely transparent.

That's exactly why it matters. A smartphone touchscreen needs to recognize an electrical input from your finger while you see the display underneath it. ITO is used in LCD displays, touchscreens, televisions, computer monitors, solar cells and other transparent electronic coatings. According to the USGS, ITO production still accounts for the majority of global indium consumption.

But there's another indium application that's becoming more interesting.

Indium and AI

AI isn't just a semiconductor story. It's increasingly an optical communications story.

Thousands of GPUs inside enormous data centers need to move extraordinary amounts of information between servers, racks and facilities. At those speeds and distances, electrical connections increasingly give way to optical ones.

That's where indium phosphide — InP comes in.

Indium phosphide is a semiconductor material particularly well suited for high-speed optical communications. InP-based lasers convert electrical signals into light. Photodetectors convert those optical signals back into electrical ones. USGS specifically highlights InP-based substrates in fiber-optic telecommunications networks for their lower latency, lower signal loss and higher speeds.

InP is used in laser diodes, photodetectors, fiber-optic communications, high-speed optical networks and 5G infrastructure. USGS now explicitly identifies artificial intelligence as a potential source of additional demand for specialized chip materials including indium phosphide.

We talk endlessly about Nvidia GPUs, hyperscalers and hundreds of billions of dollars being spent building AI infrastructure. Much less attention goes to the obscure raw materials several layers underneath all of it.

Indium is one of them.

Where does indium come from?

There aren't many indium mines.

Indium is recovered as a byproduct of zinc mining and refining. It commonly occurs in sphalerite, the principal zinc sulfide mineral, but concentrations can be tiny — USGS has reported indium concentrations in sphalerite ranging from less than 1 part per million to around 100 ppm.

Same problem we've seen with several other minor metals. If indium prices double, that doesn't mean someone can build a giant new indium mine. The economics of producing indium are tied to zinc production. You need suitable zinc deposits with indium actually present, processing infrastructure capable of recovering it, and refiners willing to separate a relatively tiny amount of indium from a much larger base-metal operation.

China dominates

China accounts for approximately 70% of global indium production.

The U.S. recovered no indium from domestic ores in 2025. Estimated U.S. consumption was about 220 tonnes. Net import reliance: 100%.

American direct imports don't come entirely from China — for 2021–2024, the largest sources were South Korea at 25%, Japan at 22%, China at 12% and Canada at 11%. But looking only at the final country shipping refined metal obscures where the material originated earlier in the supply chain. China remains the dominant primary producer.

Then came the export controls

On February 4, 2025, China announced new export controls covering tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium.

This wasn't an isolated decision. It followed earlier Chinese restrictions on gallium, germanium, graphite and antimony. A growing list of relatively obscure materials has become tools in the geopolitical competition over technology and industrial supply chains.

Chinese exports of unwrought indium in September 2025 were down approximately 72% year-over-year, according to Asian Metal data cited by USGS.

That's a significant move for a material sitting inside telecommunications and semiconductor supply chains.

Prices responded

Average U.S. warehouse prices for indium:

2023 — $244/kg
2024 — $351/kg
2025 — roughly $370–390/kg

USGS reported prices reaching approximately $408/kg in June 2025.

This isn't a theoretical supply-chain discussion. Trade flows and prices are already moving.

2026: scrutiny tightens

Reuters reported in June that Chinese authorities had increased scrutiny of indium exports as demand from AI-related optical communications increased. Buyers in Europe and North America faced additional questions about end users and longer approval processes.

China hasn't banned indium metal exports outright. But when one country controls roughly 70% of production, administrative friction is enough to matter.

The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency has been moving toward acquiring hundreds of tonnes of indium for the National Defense Stockpile — which tells you something about how seriously Washington is taking the exposure.

Recycling helps but doesn't solve it

A significant amount of indium can be recovered from manufacturing scrap, particularly from ITO production. Japan and South Korea have developed important indium recycling industries.

But recycling doesn't solve the problem. If the installed base of technology keeps expanding — more displays, more optical communications, more data centers, more advanced electronics — recycled supply still has to be supplemented with primary material. And primary material is 70% Chinese.

The setup

A relatively small commodity market supporting displays, smartphones, fiber optics, 5G, semiconductors, solar and AI data centers — with roughly 70% of primary production concentrated in China while the United States remains 100% import reliant.

And because indium is largely a byproduct of zinc, dramatically higher prices don't necessarily create dramatically higher supply.

We've spent years talking about whether there will be enough electricity and enough GPUs to build the AI infrastructure everyone is forecasting. Travel far enough upstream through these supply chains and eventually you find yourself talking about a soft silver metal recovered in tiny concentrations from zinc ores.

Ups and downs continue.

Tungsten doesn't get the attention that rare earths or copper get.

It probably should.

China controls roughly 80% of the world's tungsten supply. The U.S. produces virtually none domestically. And unlike some critical minerals where the supply concentration is a theoretical future risk, tungsten's supply chain is already under active pressure — with prices and export data to prove it.

What is tungsten?

Tungsten is the densest naturally occurring metal with the highest melting point of any element — 3,422°C.

That combination of extreme density and heat resistance makes it useful across a specific set of applications that nothing else can easily replace. Armor-piercing rounds. Rocket nozzles. Aerospace components. Cutting tools, drill bits and wear-resistant parts that keep global manufacturing running. Semiconductors. Oil and gas equipment. Welding electrodes.

Most tungsten trades as ammonium paratungstate — APT — an intermediate chemical compound processed further into tungsten metal, powder and carbide.

When tungsten supply tightens, it doesn't just affect tungsten. It affects everything made with the tools tungsten makes possible.

The supply picture

Global tungsten production reached approximately 81,000 metric tons in 2024. Vietnam is a distant second to China. The U.S. currently has no commercial tungsten mines in operation.

China's dominance goes beyond mining. It also controls the downstream processing — the smelting, refining and conversion of raw tungsten ore into the APT and carbide products manufacturers actually use. China controls over 80% of global output and over half of known reserves.

Then China tightened the controls

China clamped down on exports in February 2025, citing national security concerns.

The impact showed up immediately in the trade data.

APT exports from China came to 103 tonnes in January 2025. Then 20 tonnes in February when the controls were announced. Then zero in March, April and May — before climbing back to 40 tonnes in June and 41 tonnes in July.

For the full first eleven months of 2025, tungsten APT exports from China fell almost 70% — from 782 tonnes in 2024 to 243 tonnes.

Then China escalated. In December 2025, Beijing said it would allow only 15 firms to export tungsten in 2026–2027. Ammonium paratungstate, tungsten oxide and tungsten carbide were all included in China's 2026 Catalogue of Dual-Use Items and Technologies Subject to Import and Export Licensing Control.

New export requirements — including detailed end-user and use-case documentation — have slowed international flows and cut off exports to unfriendly jurisdictions.

The result is a two-tiered global tungsten market. One operating under China's patronage. Another scrambling to source supply from almost anywhere else.

Prices responded

Tungsten APT pricing moved from $900–940 per metric ton unit in January 2026 to $1,650–1,900 per mtu by mid-February.

Since China first added tungsten products to its export control list in February 2025, prices have risen 557%.

The Asia-Pacific volume-weighted average price for tungsten 99.9% increased approximately 273% year-on-year from April 2025 to April 2026, reaching roughly US$183.32/kg.

A 557% increase is not a market adjustment. It's a supply shock.

Why supply can't respond quickly

The obvious question is why non-Chinese producers don't simply ramp up.

Tungsten concentrate prices in China were already rising before the export controls — driven by reduced mining quotas, falling ore grades and rising domestic demand. China's own supply was tightening before it restricted exports. That makes replacing it considerably harder.

Beyond China, the development pipeline is thin. Aging operations. Declining ore grades. Almost no Western refining capacity. Even if new projects were approved today, production is years away.

Australia leads non-Chinese development with 10 projects valued at US$1.73 billion. Kazakhstan has 14 projects valued at US$1 billion. The U.S. has seven projects valued at US$522 million and no operating mines.

Vietnam is the only meaningful current alternative to Chinese supply. The rest is pipeline, not production.

Defense changed the equation

Washington has established January 1, 2027 as the deadline to stop procuring tungsten from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea for defense applications.

The U.S. has also announced Project Vault — a $12 billion stockpiling initiative for critical minerals and rare earths — with tungsten squarely in scope.

Defense procurement doesn't respond to price signals the way commercial buyers do. If tungsten is required for a weapons program, it gets bought at whatever price is available. That puts a floor under demand that most commodity markets don't have.

The demand picture

Global tungsten demand is projected to grow from approximately 143,000 tonnes in 2025 to 210,000 tonnes by 2035, according to Canaccord Genuity's April 2026 analysis.

That's roughly 47% demand growth over a decade against a supply side that is structurally constrained and geopolitically complicated.

The bigger picture

The underlying conditions in tungsten weren't a secret. Chinese dominance, no U.S. production, defense dependence, byproduct supply constraints — all of it was visible for years.

What changed was Beijing's willingness to pull the lever.

You don't need to run out of a commodity for it to become a problem. You need strategically important industries to depend on a material whose supply chain has very little room for error — and then for something to disrupt it.

In tungsten, that's no longer a hypothetical.

Germanium is one of the stranger critical-mineral markets.

It is essential to fiber optics, thermal imaging, satellites and specialized semiconductors. It is also produced in remarkably small quantities, is generally not mined as a primary commodity, and its supply chain is heavily exposed to China.

First: what is germanium?

Germanium is a brittle, grayish-white metalloid with semiconductor properties.

It was actually important to the birth of modern electronics — early transistors were made using germanium before silicon largely displaced it in conventional applications.

Today, germanium has found a different set of specialized uses where its physical properties are difficult to replicate.

According to the USGS, the major U.S. uses of germanium are fiber optics, infrared optics, semiconductors and solar cells, and radiation detectors. Historically, roughly 40% of U.S. germanium consumption goes into fiber optics, 30% into infrared optics, 20% into electronics and solar applications, and 10% into other uses.

Fiber optics

Germanium dioxide and germanium tetrachloride are used in manufacturing optical fiber. Germanium increases the refractive index of the glass at the core of the fiber, allowing light signals to travel through it.

A metal most people have never heard of sits surprisingly far upstream in the infrastructure carrying the world's data.

As AI drives enormous investment into data centers and networking infrastructure, the digital economy still depends on physical materials. Chips need fabs. Data centers need copper. Communications networks need optical fiber.

Thermal imaging and defense

Germanium is transparent to infrared radiation.

That makes it particularly useful for lenses and windows in infrared optical systems — thermal imaging, night vision, surveillance, reconnaissance, target acquisition. Germanium optics are especially effective in the medium- and long-wave infrared spectrum.

This is one reason germanium isn't simply another obscure industrial metal. It has direct national-security applications. The United States includes germanium on its official critical-minerals list.

Satellites

Germanium also goes into space.

High-efficiency multijunction solar cells can be manufactured on germanium substrates — not the ordinary silicon panels you see on someone's roof, but extremely high-performance cells where efficiency and reliability justify much higher costs. Particularly useful on satellites.

USGS researchers estimated that roughly 2.3 tonnes of germanium were sent into space in 2022 in the form of germanium wafers used for these applications.

Two tonnes doesn't sound like much. That's exactly the point. You can have an extremely important technology dependent on a surprisingly small quantity of an extremely specialized material.

Where does germanium come from?

Germanium is mainly a byproduct of zinc processing. It occurs in certain zinc, lead-zinc-copper sulfide ores and some coal deposits.

There isn't a standalone germanium mine industry that can simply respond to higher prices by developing more germanium capacity. Production depends on how much zinc and other host material is being mined, whether those ores contain recoverable germanium, whether the processing infrastructure can actually recover it, and whether doing so is economically worthwhile.

That makes the supply response complicated in ways that most commodity markets aren't.

Then there's China

China remains the world's leading producer of refined germanium. And germanium has become part of the technology and trade confrontation between China and the United States.

China introduced export licensing requirements for germanium in August 2023. Then in December 2024, China banned exports of germanium to the United States entirely.

Look at what happened to China's germanium metal exports through September of each year:

2023: 36,656 kg
2024: 18,787 kg
2025: 7,520 kg

That's roughly an 80% decline from 2023.

China's remaining 2025 exports were concentrated among just four countries — Russia at 28%, Belgium at 26%, Germany at 26%, and Japan at 18%.

Meanwhile, estimated U.S. imports of germanium metal fell 67% in 2025 compared with 2024.

Prices responded

The European price for minimum 99.999%-pure germanium metal moved from approximately $3,150/kg in January 2025 to $5,380/kg by October 2025 — roughly a 71% increase in nine months.

The International Energy Agency reported in 2026 that germanium prices outside China were running at almost three times Chinese domestic prices.

That's what export restrictions can do when production is concentrated enough.

Why can't someone just build another germanium mine?

Normally commodity markets have a feedback mechanism. Price rises, producers make more money, investment increases, production increases, supply catches up.

Germanium doesn't work that cleanly.

Because germanium is primarily a byproduct, its economics aren't the only thing determining production. Germanium prices doubling doesn't necessarily justify dramatically increasing operations at a zinc mine producing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of zinc just to recover a relatively tiny amount of germanium on the side. And even when germanium-bearing material exists, you still need the metallurgical capability to recover and refine it.

The supply response is structurally constrained in a way that's different from almost any major commodity.

Recycling helps — but doesn't eliminate the problem

Germanium can be recycled. Manufacturing scrap from fiber-optic production is particularly important because germanium can be recovered before the finished fiber enters service. USGS research has estimated recovery rates of roughly 80–95% from certain fiber-optic manufacturing waste streams.

But recycling doesn't eliminate the need for primary germanium supply, particularly as underlying demand keeps growing.

The bigger point

The germanium market isn't important because the world consumes millions of tonnes of it. It's important for almost the opposite reason.

A very small quantity of material sits underneath some enormous industries — AI and data infrastructure, telecommunications, defense, semiconductors, satellites, space.

And the supply chain for that material is concentrated enough that geopolitical decisions can quickly affect physical availability and price.

You don't necessarily need to run out of a commodity for it to become a problem. You just need a strategically important industry to require a material whose supply chain has very little room for error.

Germanium is making that case right now.

Scandium is one of the smallest commodity markets in the world.

It may also be one of the more interesting critical-mineral supply chains to watch.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the world consumed only about 60 tonnes of scandium oxide in 2025, with global production of roughly 80 tonnes.

That's an extraordinarily small market for a metal with potential applications in aerospace, defense, advanced manufacturing and energy.

The reason has less to do with scandium's usefulness than with how difficult it has been to build a reliable supply chain.

What is scandium?

Scandium is element 21 on the periodic table.

It's generally grouped with the rare earth elements, although chemically it sits somewhat outside that group. A lightweight, silvery metal whose properties become particularly interesting when added in small quantities to aluminum.

Despite its tiny production, scandium isn't especially rare in the Earth's crust. The USGS notes that scandium is actually more abundant in crustal rocks than lead, mercury and precious metals.

The problem is concentration.

Scandium rarely forms rich, standalone deposits. Instead, small quantities tend to be dispersed through other mineral deposits — which means scandium is generally not mined from a traditional scandium mine. It is usually recovered as a byproduct of mining or processing something else.

Where does scandium come from?

Commercial scandium supply has historically come from the processing of other ores and industrial streams.

China is currently the world's leading producer. Scandium-bearing material is also produced in the Philippines and sent to Japan for further processing into scandium oxide.

But scandium resources themselves are geographically much broader. The USGS has identified resources in Australia, Canada, China, Finland, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Madagascar, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Ukraine and the United States.

Australia alone has reported approximately 34,000 tonnes of scandium in accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources, according to the latest USGS data.

Compare that with estimated global scandium oxide consumption of only around 60 tonnes per year.

Scandium's problem isn't geological scarcity. It's producing it economically, reliably and at scale.

Why does scandium matter?

The most interesting potential application is aluminum-scandium alloys.

Small additions of scandium can meaningfully change the properties of aluminum — improving strength, weldability, corrosion resistance and performance at elevated temperatures. That's an attractive combination for industries where weight matters: aerospace, defense, aircraft structures, high-performance transportation, advanced manufacturing.

If you can make an aluminum component lighter while maintaining the required strength and durability, the economic value can be much greater than the cost of the small amount of scandium it contains.

This is one reason aerospace is already one of the largest categories of scandium consumption.

There is also another potentially important use: solid oxide fuel cells, where scandium-stabilized zirconia can be used as an electrolyte material. According to the USGS, the primary global uses of scandium today are aerospace alloys, other alloys and solid oxide fuel cells.

So why isn't scandium already a large commodity?

Scandium has been stuck in a supply-demand trap.

An aircraft or automobile manufacturer doesn't want to redesign a component around aluminum-scandium alloys unless it knows that scandium will be available reliably, at scale and at a predictable price for years. But mining companies don't want to spend hundreds of millions developing new scandium production unless they know large industrial customers will actually buy the material.

So manufacturers wait for supply. Producers wait for demand. And the market stays tiny.

This is very different from copper, where enormous existing production and consumption allow manufacturers to assume a global market will exist. With scandium, the entire global market is measured in tens of tonnes. A single successful project could materially alter the supply side of the market. One major aerospace or industrial application could have an outsized impact on demand.

Then geopolitics entered the equation.

In April 2025, China imposed additional export controls covering scandium metal, alloys, oxides and compounds. As of the end of 2025, those controls formally remained in place, although China had begun issuing general export licenses to selected exporters.

For a commodity with such a small and concentrated supply chain, that matters.

There aren't dozens of large scandium mines and refineries around the world capable of quickly replacing lost production. The United States currently has no meaningful primary mine production of scandium. And unlike copper, there isn't a huge liquid global market with millions of tonnes moving between producers and consumers. The scandium market is small enough that disruptions at individual facilities — or shifts in trade policy — can move the needle.

The U.S. is beginning to respond.

In 2025, the U.S. government awarded funding to help develop a mine-to-master-alloy scandium supply chain in Nebraska. Another approximately $30 million award was announced to support development of U.S. scandium and gallium supply, including technology designed to recover and purify scandium from existing industrial waste.

That second approach is worth paying attention to.

Because scandium occurs in low concentrations across many different ores, future production may not come from conventional scandium mines at all. It could increasingly come from recovering scandium from mine tailings, processing residues, nickel operations, titanium-related feedstocks and other industrial waste streams.

Scandium could become a case study in how critical-mineral production evolves when the valuable element isn't what anyone is actually mining for.

The paradox of scandium

The world appears to have substantial scandium resources. We know scandium can materially improve certain aluminum alloys. We know aerospace, defense and energy applications can use it. And Western governments increasingly consider secure critical-mineral supply chains a strategic priority.

Yet global scandium consumption remains around 60 tonnes of scandium oxide per year.

The most important question about scandium isn't how much is in the ground.

It's what happens to demand if industry finally becomes confident that several hundred — or eventually several thousand — tonnes can be supplied reliably every year.

Scandium may be a small market because its applications are inherently limited. Or it may be a small market because manufacturers have never had a large, diversified and dependable supply chain they could confidently design around.

The answer determines whether scandium is a curiosity or an opportunity.

The United States has a critical minerals problem, but I don't think the biggest issue is whether we can find enough minerals in the ground.

The bigger vulnerability is the critical minerals supply chain — particularly processing and refining.

Take rare earths.

There are significant rare earth deposits outside China. The problem is that mining the ore is only the beginning. China has spent decades building enormous capacity to separate, process and refine rare earths into materials that manufacturers can actually use.

That distinction matters.

You can have a rare earth mine in the United States, Canada or Australia and still depend on China somewhere further down the supply chain.

And rare earths aren't the only example.

Indonesia has become the dominant force in global nickel production. China has a major position across battery-material processing and refining. Copper production remains concentrated among a relatively small number of countries just as electricity grids, data centers, EVs and electrification are creating additional demand.

For decades, we treated this concentration as economic efficiency.

Mine where geology is best.

Process where costs are lowest.

Keep inventories lean.

Buy the finished material on the global market.

That model works extremely well as long as geopolitics doesn't interfere with the supply chain.

Increasingly, that's a dangerous assumption.

Export controls, tariffs, resource nationalism and competition over strategic resources are turning critical minerals into an issue of economic and national security, not simply commodity supply and demand.

I don't think the answer is for the United States to mine every critical mineral domestically. That's neither realistic nor necessary.

The more achievable goal is a critical minerals supply chain spread across the U.S. and allied countries, with enough mining, processing, refining, recycling and strategic inventory that losing access to one major supplier doesn't create a crisis.

That means the critical minerals race may ultimately be won somewhere other than the mine.

Processing and refining could be the real strategic bottleneck.

If the United States suddenly lost access to its dominant foreign supplier tomorrow, which critical mineral would be the hardest to replace?

Rare earths would be near the top of my list.

Risk on this fall.