Recent disruptions in the Middle East highlight a growing vulnerability in global mineral value chains that extends beyond minerals. While much attention focuses on oil, gas, and energy markets, the implications reach deeper into the industrial systems that underpin critical mineral production.
The Strait of Hormuz is a key chokepoint for global trade, through which a significant share of crude oil, gas, and petrochemicals is transported. Disruptions have affected not only energy markets but also mineral value chains. Supply concerns have arisen less from material scarcity than from bottlenecks in the supply of industrial chemicals and reagents. Often overlooked in industrial policy, auxiliary inputs are decisive for the functioning and stability of mineral production.
In contrast to critical minerals, typically defined by economic importance and supply risk, auxiliary materials are consumable inputs defined by their functional necessity as indispensable enablers of mineral production and processing. Forming the industrial backbone of mineral value chains, examples include industrial chemicals such as sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrochloric acid, caustic soda, ammonia, flotation, leaching and precipitation reagents, and gases such as helium, neon, krypton, argon, and hydrogen.
Are Auxiliaries and Critical Minerals Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Auxiliaries represent hidden vulnerabilities within industrial value chains. Impacting multiple sectors and value chain segments simultaneously, disruptions in their availability, price, or transport can constrain production, even where mineral resources are abundant. Three important observations emerge from recent bottlenecks.
First, auxiliary supply is highly concentrated and often depends on geopolitically sensitive shipping routes. As illustrated by the conflict in the Middle East, a significant share of these inputs are by-products of petroleum, coal, and natural gas production. Hence, disruptions to fuel-mineral production, combined with supply constraints from the closure of Hormuz, have had cascading effects across mineral value chains. This impacts copper, nickel, aluminium, and titanium markets with ramifications for advanced manufacturing and agricultural sectors more broadly.
Second, the ability of producing countries to move into refining and advanced manufacturing depends as much on reliable and affordable access to auxiliaries as on mineral resources themselves. Even where resource endowments are strong, constraints in these inputs can hamper value addition and limit the progression into higher value downstream activities.
Third, trade statistics typically classify auxiliaries as chemicals or manufactured goods. Criticality assessments and development plans often exclude them. This is notable considering that by-products such as cobalt, indium, and gallium feature prominently in critical minerals discussions. Meanwhile, fuel-related by-products such as sulfur, ammonia, and petroleum coke receive less attention.
This reflects a divide between fuel and non-fuel policy frameworks, which tend to assess value chains in isolation and obscure the role of auxiliaries as essential mineral enablers.
Why Auxiliaries Matter for Critical Minerals
Sulfuric acid provides a clear example of how constraints in auxiliary inputs translate into mineral supply risks. It is a foundational input for processing copper, nickel, cobalt, and uranium, underpinning leaching and solvent extraction processes, as well as battery value chains.
Production depends on the availability of sulfur, primarily recovered as a by-product of oil and gas processing, and to a lesser extent from sulfide ore roasting and fertiliser production. Supply is therefore linked to hydrocarbon production and processing rather than mining demand alone. Due to the high sulfur content of its oil and gas reserves and extensive recovery infrastructure, the Middle East plays a central role, producing approximately Indeed, whilst producers in the United States and Canada also recover sulfur, the lower sulfur content of reserves limits their ability to rapidly expand output to offset disrupted supply.
As most sulfur exports rely on transportation through the Strait of Hormuz, reduced flows through the Persian Gulf have already constrained global shipments, with pronounced effects in import-dependent regions, notably in Africa and Asia. For instance, Indonesia produces over 50% of global nickel but imports 75% of its sulphur from the Middle East, while the Central African Copperbelt sources approximately 90% of its 2 million tonnes of sulphur imports from the Middle East.
How Sulfuric Acid Shortages and Trade Constraints Impact Mining Costs
This creates a two-pronged risk. Producers increasingly face procurement challenges and price volatility, particularly in acid intensive processes such as in the copper and nickel sector. At the same time, smelters depend on acid as a revenue-generating by-product, so disruptions affect both operational cost and competitiveness. Crucially, sulfuric acid’s corrosiveness, transport risks, and low value-to-weight ratio make long‑distance trade uneconomical. With only around 7% of global production traded, regional imbalances remain acute even when global supply is sufficient.
Similar dynamics apply to other auxiliaries, notably ammonia, hydrochloric acid, and helium. Despite their essential role in the industrial mining ecosystem, auxiliaries receive limited policy attention, only becoming visible during shortages.
Despite their essential role, auxiliaries receive limited policy attention, only becoming visible during shortages.
Implications for Producer Countries
Recent disruptions point to a broader lesson for value chain resilience: securing access to mineral resources alone is not sufficient. Auxiliary inputs and industrial ecosystems that enable mineral production, processing, and manufacturing need greater attention.
For producer countries, this has important implications. Value addition depends not only on access to mineral resources, but also on reliable access to the chemicals, reagents, gases, and other operational inputs required to transform those resources into higher-value products.
Auxiliary material availability is as much of a factor in shaping refining, smelting, and downstream manufacturing as geology itself.
Countries pursuing beneficiation and mineral value addition strategies should consider auxiliary supply chains with the same level of attention given to mineral supply chains. Failure to secure reliable access to these inputs can constrain production, increase costs, undermine investment attractiveness, and limit progression into higher-value segments of global value chains. Conversely, access to both mineral resources and critical auxiliaries can become a source of industrial competitiveness.
A broader definition of supply chain security is therefore essential.
Rethinking Supply Chain Security
Looking ahead, several priorities emerge. In the short term, governments need to strengthen monitoring of auxiliary supply chains, including logistics, price dynamics, supplier concentration, and regional dependencies. Taking a medium term view, critical mineral strategies and supply risk assessments should be expanded to incorporate auxiliary materials, alongside primary commodities. Additionally, more integrated industrial ecosystems – combining mining, processing and smelting with chemical production where feasible – could help reduce exposure to external shocks and strengthen industrial resilience.
The lesson from the Strait of Hormuz is clear: securing critical minerals requires securing the inputs that make production possible.
In an increasingly fragmented and geopolitically complex world, auxiliary materials are not peripheral industrial inputs. They are strategic assets in their own right, deserving greater attention from policymakers, investors, and industry alike.
An upcoming IGF policy brief will explore these dynamics in greater depth, examining how auxiliary inputs shape mineral value chains, where risks are most acute, and the implications for producer countries managing these dependencies. The topic will also feature during the 22nd IGF AGM, taking place on October 12–14, 2026, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, hosted by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This year’s theme is Trust in an Interdependent World: Advancing inclusion and resilience in mineral value chains.
