Materials & Inputs

4000 BC

Early metalworkers first used meteoric iron gathered from the Earth's surface

The earliest iron used by humans was meteoric iron found lying on the surface rather than smelted from ore. This marks the beginning of metals as a worked industrial input, long before ore extraction and processing were mastered.

circa 2000 BCE · roughly 4,000 years ago

Long-distance tin trade networks supplied the bronze that defined an entire technological era

Tin ore, far rarer than copper, moved along trade routes stretching from Britain and Iberia to Central Asia and Afghanistan to reach Mediterranean and Near Eastern bronze workshops, making bronze production dependent on some of the earliest known international supply chains.

circa 1200 BCE · roughly 3,200 years ago

Ironworking spread rapidly once Bronze Age trade networks collapsed

When the tin trade that fed bronze production broke down at the end of the second millennium BCE, smiths across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East turned to the more widely available ore, founding the metallurgical basis of the Iron Age.

11th century · roughly 1,000 years ago

Song dynasty China expanded iron production to a scale not matched in Europe for centuries

State-encouraged coal-fired smelting lifted Chinese iron output to levels historians have compared with early industrial Europe, supplying tools, coinage and weapons across an economy far larger than any contemporary rival.

1545 · roughly 480 years ago

The Potosí silver mines made Spanish colonial Bolivia the world's largest source of mined silver

Discovered in the Andean highlands, the deposit was worked using forced indigenous labour under the mita system and supplied silver that underpinned Spanish imperial finance and, through Manila galleon trade, the early modern global economy.

1856 · 170 years ago

The Bessemer process cut the cost of steel enough to make it a mass industrial input

Henry Bessemer's method for blowing air through molten iron to remove impurities cut steel production costs sharply, turning a premium material used mainly for tools and weapons into the basic input of railways, ships and structural engineering.

• The Gilchrist-Thomas process extended steelmaking to phosphoric iron ores

1879–1884 · roughly 145 years ago

The War of the Pacific gave Chile control of the Atacama's nitrate and copper deposits

Chile's victory over Bolivia and Peru transferred the mineral-rich Atacama region to Chilean control, funding decades of state revenue from nitrate exports and establishing the country's long-standing dominance in copper.

1888 · 138 years ago

The Bayer process made large-scale alumina refining from bauxite practical

Karl Bayer's method for extracting alumina from bauxite ore remains the basis of almost all aluminium production today, turning a once rare and expensive metal into a mass industrial input within a few decades of its patenting.

1906 · 120 years ago

Union Minière du Haut Katanga began large-scale copper and cobalt mining in the Belgian Congo

The company's concession over Katanga's mineral belt established central Africa as a long-term source of copper and cobalt, a role the region, later Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, has never fully relinquished.

1909 · 117 years ago

The Haber-Bosch process fixed nitrogen from air into ammonia at industrial scale

Fritz Haber's laboratory synthesis, industrialised by Carl Bosch at BASF, replaced imported nitrate as the main feedstock for fertiliser and explosives, freeing chemical manufacturing from dependence on a handful of mined and guano deposits.

1992 · 34 years ago

China began treating rare earth resources as a strategic lever, not just a commodity

Deng Xiaoping's remark that the Middle East had oil while China had rare earths captured a shift in thinking that, over the following decade, concentrated mining, processing and separation capacity inside China until it accounted for most of world supply.

• China's rare earth export quotas were struck down at the World Trade Organization

2014 · 12 years ago

Bob Heaney and the Aberdeen Group reported that raw material deliveries were among the least-tracked supply chain activities

A survey of supply chain senior staff found only 43% tracked raw material deliveries in full and on time, and only 19% did so automatically. The finding highlighted a visibility gap in the management of essential industrial inputs.

2020s · 6 years ago

COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the steel industry and drove US steel prices up 250%

Pandemic disruption cut steel supply, and when demand rebounded prices in the United States rose sharply. The episode demonstrated how fragile raw material availability is to shocks in global production networks.

April 2025 · last year

China expanded rare earth export licensing to seven more elements

The commerce ministry added samarium, terbium, dysprosium and several other elements to its export control list, requiring licences for shipments abroad and giving Beijing a direct lever over supply to automakers, defence contractors and electronics makers worldwide.

• Licensing delays persisted into 2026

March 2025 · last year

The European Commission designated its first batch of Critical Raw Materials Act strategic projects

Dozens of extraction, processing and recycling projects across member states received strategic status, giving them faster permitting and easier access to finance under the bloc's push to cut reliance on single-country suppliers.

February 2025 · last year

The Democratic Republic of Congo suspended cobalt exports to arrest a price collapse

The mining regulator halted shipments from the world's largest cobalt-producing country for an initial four months, aiming to work through a global glut built up after several years of rapid output growth.

• The suspension gave way to an export quota system

January 2025 · last year

India's government approved a National Critical Mineral Mission

The programme funded domestic exploration, incentives for processing plants and support for state-owned firms acquiring lithium and cobalt assets abroad, part of an effort to cut reliance on imported battery and magnet materials.

• The mission issued its first exploration blocks

Mid-2025 · last year

The US Commerce Department opened a Section 232 investigation into copper imports

The inquiry examined whether reliance on imported refined copper posed a national security risk and was followed by tariff measures intended to encourage new domestic smelting and refining capacity.

2024–2025 · last year

Manara Minerals took a stake in Vale's base metals business

The joint venture between Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and state miner Ma'aden bought a minority holding in the Brazilian company's nickel and copper unit, part of a wider push to secure processing and offtake positions in battery metals.

2024 · 2 years ago

Indonesia cut nickel mining quotas after a price collapse

The government scaled back approved ore production after years of rapid expansion pushed prices down sharply, squeezing smaller miners while larger integrated smelters continued to expand processing capacity.

2024–2025 · last year

The Lobito Corridor partners advanced rail links to move copper and cobalt to Atlantic ports

The United States, the European Union, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola pushed forward financing and construction on the rail corridor, intended to cut the time and cost of exporting central African minerals compared with existing southern routes.

2024–2025 · last year

Lithium producers in Argentina and Chile scaled up direct lithium extraction technology

Several commercial-scale plants using membrane and adsorption-based extraction rather than traditional evaporation ponds began operating, cutting production time and water use in the region supplying much of the world's lithium.

2024–2025 · last year

Fighting in Myanmar's Kachin State disrupted heavy rare earth mining near the Chinese border

An armed group's seizure of mining areas supplying much of the world's heavy rare earths cut output and pushed up prices for elements used in permanent magnets, exposing how concentrated the supply chain remained despite years of diversification efforts.

2022 · 4 years ago

SAP survey of US logistics leaders found 44% blamed a lack of raw materials for supply chain problems

Four hundred US-based logistics and supply chain leaders were interviewed, with nearly half citing raw material shortages as a cause of disruption, and half expecting reduced availability in 2023. A separate 2022 trade report noted that improved raw material sourcing had become a main objective of firms reconfiguring supply chains.

2022 · 4 years ago

Russian invasion of Ukraine caused natural gas prices to rise 50%

The invasion disrupted energy feedstock markets and pushed natural gas prices up by half during 2022. Gas is both a fuel and a chemical feedstock, so the shock propagated through industrial input costs.