Countries producing the most critical minerals

Several countries throughout the world are the leading producers of one or more critical mineral or element. As of 2015, China was the main producer for 23 such commodity elements, down from 28 in 2011. That made China the leading country by far based on the number of critical minerals and elements that it was the top producer of. Comparatively, Australia, second place in the ranking, was the world's leading producer of just three critical elements and minerals as of 2015.

Number of times a country was leading producer of critical minerals and elements worldwide in 2011 and 2015, by country

Leading producer country	2011	2015
China	28	23
Australia	4	3
Chile	3	2
South Africa	1	2
D.R. Congo	1	1
Indonesia	0	1
Brazil	1	1
Kazakhstan	1	1
Russia	3	1
Japan	1	1
Rwanda	1	1
United States	3	1
Mexico	0	1
Canada	2	0
Turkey	1	0
Peru	1	0
India	1	0

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Release date

December 2015

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2011 and 2015

Special properties

number of times a country is the leading producer of an elements/element group that is of economic value

Supplementary notes

The following elements were considered in the study: Ag, Al, As, Au, B, Ba, Be, Bi, C (coal, diamond and graphite), Ca, Cd, Cl Co, Cr, Cu, F, Fe, Ga, Ge, He, Hg, I, In, K, L, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Nb, Ni, P, Pb, PGE (Ru, Pd, Os, Ir, and Pt), Re, REE (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb and Lu), S, Sb, Se, Sn, Sr, Ta, Th, Ti, U, V, W, Zn, and Zr.
This statistic was assembled using more than one edition of the report from the source.

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