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One screen answering: “if the dominant supplier halts, who can fill the gap, how fast, at what regulatory risk?” Replaces manual cross-referencing of the production table with the IPTM register.
If Brazil refining (89% of global) halts: 2 substitutes cover 100% of non-BR capacity · fastest ramp 6-12mo (CA) · highest policy-risk: CA (score 0, 2 filings) · 1 of these (RU) sit under comprehensive Western sanctions and aren't a real option for a Western buyer regardless of the risk score.
Stage: Ferroniobium production (FeNb 65%, mine-co-located) · Year: 2025 · Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (Feb 2026 release; 2025 data).
Post-removal HHI = 8,025 (extreme). Lead-time is a heuristic from share-of-stage (≥10% → 0-6mo brownfield · ≥2% → 6-12mo ramp · >0 → 12-24mo new line · 0 + supplier-directory present → 24-36mo greenfield). Policy-risk = Σ over last-24m niobium filings issued by that country (severity × polarity-sign × 5y-linear recency). This measures a country's own export-restriction behaviour only — it is a separate axis from Western sanctions exposure (flagged below in red where it applies). A country with zero restrictive filings can still be sanctioned by the US/EU/UK and therefore not a real sourcing option.
Most concentrated of the 13 materials in this register. Brazilian reserves are ~98% of world total, so even sustained non-Brazilian project investment cannot meaningfully shift the share inside 5-7 years. CBMM Araxá is the single most important critical-mineral facility in the Western Hemisphere — operational-disruption risk dominates policy-shock risk because Brazil is a friendly Western-aligned supplier with stable multi-decade offtake contracts. The two atypical ownership facts: (a) CBMM is privately held (Moreira Salles + Camargo Corrêa families) and 30% sold in 2011 to Japanese-Korean (15%) + Chinese (15%) consortia at ~$1.95bn — locking in offtake security across all major economies; (b) refining co-locates with mining (ferroniobium is produced via aluminothermic reduction at the mine site), so refining shares mirror mining shares, unlike the typical critical-mineral pattern of mining-here-but-refining-in-China. The German Mittelstand exposure is direct via the HSLA pipeline / auto / structural / shipbuilding steel base — every Bavarian + NRW + Saarland steel-fabrication line consumes ferroniobium-microalloyed plate or pipe.