Baryte

Primary uses. weighting agent in oil and gas drilling muds; barium chemicals.

The chain — from the ground to the buyer

A critical material passes through distinct stages, and the country that leads each stage is often different — that gap is what this atlas exists to show. Each layer comes from a different public source with its own vintage, labelled below; shares are % of the world total.

● Reserves — where it could come from

Reserves are the deposits known to exist and economically worth mining — the long-run ceiling on supply, distinct from what is actually produced today. Baryte's reserves are moderately concentrated: 🇨🇳 China holds the most (28%), ahead of 🇮🇷 Iran (26%) and 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan (22%). Tellingly, the country sitting on the most ore (🇨🇳 China) is not the one extracting it (🇮🇳 India) — geology sets the ceiling, but capacity and policy decide who actually supplies the market. USGS 2024 · reserves as of 2023

● Mined — where it is dug up today

Mining is where ore leaves the ground — the stage most people equate with “the source”, though it is rarely where the supply risk actually concentrates. Output is broadly diversified: 🇮🇳 India supplies 32%, with 🇨🇳 China (22%) next. It out-produces reserve-richer 🇨🇳 China while holding just 13% of reserves itself — supply power at this stage is built on installed capacity, not geology. USGS 2024 · 2023 production

● Refined / processed — where it becomes usable metal

Refining / processing converts ore into the metal or compound buyers actually purchase; it concentrates in fewer hands than mining and sits at the buyer's doorstep, which is why it is usually the true chokepoint. A country-level processing breakdown is not publicly reported for baryte — only the leading refiner is known, which itself signals how opaque this stage is. leading refiner only — fuller breakdown not publicly reported

not available

● Recycling & substitutability — the mitigants (EU CRM)

1% of supply comes from recycling end-of-life products. Substitutability is medium — partial substitutes exist.

● Traded — who ships it

Actual bilateral trade of the traded form, reconciled from UN Comtrade / CEPII BACI. Pick a year below — 2018–2024 measured, 2025* nowcast, 2026** directional scenario. The full 2002–2026 range is on the interactive atlas.

Context

Drilling-fluid weighting agent: China ~53% and Morocco ~30%. The naive view is scattered across the Netherlands and Italy (~25%/24%); the origin is China.

Every figure on this page is computed from out/data.json and out/flows_2024.json by build_profiles.py — no hand-entered numbers.