Aluminium ores / bauxite

Primary uses. primary ore feedstock for alumina and aluminium metal production.

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. Aluminium ores / bauxite's reserves are broadly diversified: 🇬🇳 Guinea holds the most (25%), ahead of 🇻🇳 Vietnam (19%) and 🇦🇺 Australia (12%). At today's extraction rate the known reserves would last roughly 75 years, so scarcity is not the binding constraint — access, capital and processing capacity are. Tellingly, the country sitting on the most ore (🇬🇳 Guinea) is not the one extracting it (🇦🇺 Australia) — 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: 🇦🇺 Australia supplies 24%, with 🇬🇳 Guinea (24%) next. It out-produces reserve-richer 🇬🇳 Guinea while holding just 12% 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. 🇨🇳 China processes 60% — concentrated. So although 🇦🇺 Australia mines the most, China controls processing: the dependency the mine map hides, and the reason import-origin statistics misread the real source. On the buffers: 32% of supply is recovered from end-of-life recycling and substitutes are scarce, while the US imports >75% of what it consumes. BGS World Mineral Statistics 2024

● Recycling & substitutability — the mitigants (EU CRM)

32% of supply comes from recycling end-of-life products — a meaningful secondary source that lowers the supply-risk score. Substitutability is high — few or no alternatives, so a disruption bites hard.

● 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

The feedstock for aluminium: Guinea ~59%, then Brazil. The naive view points at Ireland (~35%, the Aughinish alumina refinery) - a processing artefact, not the origin, which is Guinea.

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