A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce

goods In economics, goods are anything that is good, usually in the sense that it provides welfare or utility to someone. Alan V. Deardorff, 2006. ''Terms Of Trade: Glossary of International Economics'', World Scientific. Online version: Deardorffs ...

finished goods Finished goods are goods that have completed the manufacturing process but have not yet been sold or distributed to the end user. Manufacturing Manufacturing has three classes of inventory: # Raw material # Work in process # Finished goods A ...

, energy, or intermediate materials/

Intermediate good Intermediate goods, producer goods or semi-finished products are Good (economics), goods, such as partly finished goods, used as inputs in the production of other goods including final goods. A firm may make and then use intermediate goods, or mak ...

s that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedstock, the term connotes these materials are bottleneck assets and are required to produce other products. The term raw material denotes materials in unprocessed or minimally processed states such as raw

latex Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

, raw

biomass Biomass is a term used in several contexts: in the context of ecology it means living organisms, and in the context of bioenergy it means matter from recently living (but now dead) organisms. In the latter context, there are variations in how ...

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic polymers, synthetic or Semisynthesis, semisynthetic materials composed primarily of Polymer, polymers. Their defining characteristic, Plasticity (physics), plasticity, allows them to be Injection moulding ...

air An atmosphere () is a layer of gases that envelop an astronomical object, held in place by the gravity of the object. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosph ...

, logs, and

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

. The term secondary raw material denotes waste material which has been recycled and injected back into use as productive material.

Raw material in supply chain

Supply chain A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distri ...

s typically begin with the acquisition or extraction of raw materials. For example, the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

notes that food supply chains commence in the agricultural phase of food production. A 2022 report on changes affecting

international trade International trade is the exchange of capital, goods, and services across international borders or territories because there is a need or want of goods or services. (See: World economy.) In most countries, such trade represents a significan ...

noted that improving sourcing of raw materials has become one of the main objectives of companies reconfiguring their supply chains. In a 2022 survey conducted by SAP, wherein 400 US-based leaders in logistics and supply chain were interviewed, 44% of respondents cited a lack of raw materials as a reason for their supply chain issues. Forecasting for 2023, 50% of respondents expect a reduced availability of raw materials in the US to drive supply chain disruptions.

Raw materials markets

Raw materials markets are affected by consumer behavior, supply chain uncertainty,

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

disruptions, and regulations, amongst other factors. This results in volatile raw materials markets that are difficult to optimize and manage. Companies can struggle when faced with raw material volatility due to a lack of understanding of market demands, poor or no visibility into the indirect supply chain, and the time lag of raw materials price changes. Volatility in the raw materials markets can also be driven by

natural disasters A natural disaster is the very harmful impact on a society or community brought by natural phenomenon or Hazard#Natural hazard, hazard. Some examples of natural hazards include avalanches, droughts, earthquakes, floods, heat waves, landslides ...

and geopolitcal conflict. The

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

disrupted the steel industry, and once demand rebounded, prices increased 250% in the US. The

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

caused the price of natural gas to increase by 50% in 2022.

Raw material processing

Ceramic

While

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought to light mostly through the

Neolithic Revolution The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunter-gatherer, hunting and gathering to one of a ...

. That is important because it was a way for the first agrarians to store and carry a surplus of supplies. While most jars and pots were fire-clay

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

, Neolithic communities also created

kiln A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or Chemical Changes, chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects m ...

s that were able to fire such materials to remove most of the

to create very stable and hard materials. Without the presence of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

on the riverbanks of the Tigris and Euphrates in the Fertile Crescent, such kilns would have been impossible for people in the region to have produced. Using these kilns, the process of

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

was possible once the

Bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...

and

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

s came upon the people that lived there.

Metallic

Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into a usable state. Metallic

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

s are first processed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in a

foundry A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

. Foundries then smelt the ore into usable metal that may be

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metal, metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have prop ...

ed with other materials to improve certain properties. One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world is

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

, and combined with

nickel Nickel is a chemical element; it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slo ...

, this material makes up over 35% of the material in the Earth's inner and

outer core Earth's outer core is a fluid layer about thick, composed of mostly iron and nickel that lies above Earth's solid Earth's inner core, inner core and below its Earth's mantle, mantle. The outer core begins approximately beneath Earth's surface ...

. The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 BC was called

meteoric iron Meteoric iron, sometimes meteoritic iron, is a native metal and early-universe protoplanetary-disk remnant found in meteorites and made from the elements iron and nickel, mainly in the form of the mineral phases kamacite and taenite. Meteoric ...

and was found on the surface of the Earth. This type of

came from the meteorites that struck the Earth before humans appeared, and was in very limited supply. This type is unlike most of the iron in the Earth, as the iron in the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

was much deeper than the humans of that time period were able to excavate. The nickel content of the meteoric iron made it not necessary to be heated up, and instead, it was hammered and shaped into tools and weapons.

Iron ore

Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today are

Hematite Hematite (), also spelled as haematite, is a common iron oxide compound with the formula, Fe2O3 and is widely found in rocks and soils. Hematite crystals belong to the rhombohedral lattice system which is designated the alpha polymorph of . ...

and

Magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula . It is one of the iron oxide, oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetism, ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetization, magnetized to become a ...

. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes. The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine. One of the first sources of iron ore is

bog iron Bog iron is a form of impure iron deposit that develops in bogs or swamps by the chemical or biochemical oxidation of iron carried in solution. In general, bog ores consist primarily of iron oxyhydroxides, commonly goethite (FeO(OH)). Iron-beari ...

. Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains.

Conflicts of raw materials

Places with plentiful raw materials and little economic development often show a phenomenon known as " Dutch disease" or the " resource curse", which occurs when the economy of a country is mainly based upon its exports because of its method of governance.Bernard Tchibambelela, Le commerce mondial de la faim: stratégie de rupture positive au Congo-Brazzaville, Éditions L'Harmattan, 2009, p. 183. An example of this is the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...