Magnesium, unwrought

Primary uses. aluminium alloys for automotive parts; iron and steel desulfurization.

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. Magnesium's reserves are broadly diversified: 🇷🇺 Russia holds the most (30%), ahead of 🇸🇰 Slovakia (16%) and 🇨🇳 China (9%). Tellingly, the country sitting on the most ore (🇷🇺 Russia) is not the one extracting it (🇨🇳 China) — 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 highly concentrated: 🇨🇳 China supplies 88%, with 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan (3%) next. That is effectively a single-country dependence — one government's policy or one region's disruption can move the entire upstream. It out-produces reserve-richer 🇷🇺 Russia while holding just 9% 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 94% — highly concentrated. China leads both mining and refining, so its grip is structural rather than a pure processing gate. On the buffers: 13% of supply is recovered from end-of-life recycling and substitutes are only partial, while the US imports >50% of what it consumes. BGS World Mineral Statistics 2024

● Recycling & substitutability — the mitigants (EU CRM)

13% 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

China ~92% by value, ~95% by tonnage. The naive view blames the Netherlands (44%) - a Rotterdam clearing artefact; the true 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.