Production, reserves, refining, recycling, grades and trade — the full picture behind each metal we source.
The industrial world's conductor: wire, motors, grids and plumbing all run on it.
Light, strong and endlessly recyclable, but smelting it is really an electricity business.
The world's fourth most widely used metal, mostly for galvanizing steel against corrosion.
Unusually among industrial metals, lead is primarily a recycled commodity, not a mined one.
The stainless-steel metal: roughly two-thirds goes into stainless, and one country now mines most of it.
The solder metal: a small market, mined in a handful of places, and priced for tight supply.
The base of the industrial economy: made from iron ore and coal, and half of it made in one country.
A battery and jet-engine metal, mined mostly as a by-product, with three quarters of it from one country.
The metal with the highest melting point, used wherever things must cut, wear or stay hard at extreme heat.
Seventeen elements that are not actually rare, but whose processing is concentrated in one country.
Two industries in one: a white pigment made from most of the ore, and an aerospace metal made from a small part.
Part commodity, part monetary asset: only two-fifths of demand is jewellery, and the rest is investment and reserves.
The only precious metal that is also a major industrial input, and mostly mined as a by-product.
A catalyst metal: most platinum goes into cleaning exhaust, and seven-tenths of it comes from one country.
The gasoline-engine catalyst metal: more than 80% of it comes from two countries.