Phosphorus

Primary uses. agricultural fertilizers; animal feed; industrial detergents; metal plating.

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. Phosphorus's reserves are concentrated: 🇲🇦 Morocco holds the most (68%), ahead of 🇨🇳 China (5%) and 🇪🇬 Egypt (4%). At today's extraction rate the known reserves would last roughly 336 years, so scarcity is not the binding constraint — access, capital and processing capacity are. Tellingly, the country sitting on the most ore (🇲🇦 Morocco) 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 moderately concentrated: 🇨🇳 China supplies 41%, with 🇲🇦 Morocco (16%) next. It out-produces reserve-richer 🇲🇦 Morocco while holding just 5% 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 78% — highly concentrated. China leads both mining and refining, so its grip is structural rather than a pure processing gate. On the buffers: 0% of supply is recovered from end-of-life recycling and substitutes are scarce, while the US imports 14% of what it consumes. EU CRM 2023

● Recycling & substitutability — the mitigants (EU CRM)

0% of supply comes from recycling end-of-life products — there is essentially no end-of-life recycling, so a disruption has no secondary cushion. 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

Elemental phosphorus comes mainly from Vietnam (~64%) and China (~25%). The naive view blames Germany and Italy (~49%/40%); the origin is South-East Asian.

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