This is interesting, thanks for sharing! On your sentences re “Beijing required its aluminum smelters to go after the gallium…they had to be told because it’s hard work”, well, one way or another, in any system they will told to, so I think its always important to consider how the decision was made to tell them to do so and how the directives were issued. In any system, getting firms to do low-margin, fiddly byproduct recovery (especially when it complicates operations) almost always requires some mix of standards, incentives, procurement pull, licensing conditions, industrial strategy, etc.
So I think a very important question that should follow “were they told?”, is what decision architecture produced the ‘telling’? Was it a centralized command order? A federated party process? A procurement/defense-supply-chain logic that made gallium recovery the condition for access to credit, power, quotas, or contracts? Something else? Without specifying that mechanism, the sentence doesn’t really distinguish China from other possible systems—it mostly just asserts that someone somewhere overcame the “hard work” problem, which is precisely the universal hurdle with byproduct metals.
In the Unites States Old Republic, a similar outcome would likely have came about and it likely would have emerged in a way that way that in part would have been quite similar to how China arrived a it since it would have, like it did in China, largely came from federated party and state/local processes
Currently, there are four primary aluminum smelters in operation in the United States.
🏭 US Primary Aluminum Smelters
These four operational smelters are owned by two companies: Alcoa and Century Aluminum.
Alcoa's operational smelters:
Massena Operations (Massena, New York)
Warrick Operations (Newburgh, Indiana)
Century Aluminum's operational smelters:
Mount Holly Plant (Mount Holly, South Carolina)
Sebree Plant (Sebree, Kentucky)
The US aluminum industry has seen a significant decline in primary smelting due to factors like high energy costs, as producing primary aluminum is an extremely energy-intensive process. The U.S. now relies heavily on secondary aluminum production, which involves recycling scrap metal.
how much gallium is produced in the US from primary and secondary aluminum refineries ?
[{excerpted from below: The U.S. meets its entire critical mineral needs for gallium through imports of low-purity primary metal and finished wafers, supplemented by the domestic recycling/refining of high-purity scrap.]
The United States currently produces no domestic low-purity primary gallium from its aluminum or zinc refining operations.
Historically, the U.S. has been 100% net import-reliant on primary gallium, which is the unrefined, low-purity form recovered as a byproduct of processing aluminum ore (bauxite) and, to a lesser extent, zinc ores.
Here is a breakdown of the production situation:
🚫 Primary Production from Aluminum (Bauxite)
Zero Production: No domestic production of low-purity primary gallium has been reported in the U.S. since 1987.
The Gallium Opportunity: Gallium is naturally present in bauxite (aluminum ore). During the process of refining bauxite into alumina (the Bayer process), most of the gallium concentrates in the caustic process liquor, or red mud waste.
The US Approach: Countries like China command nearly all of the world's primary output because they have installed the necessary capture units to recover gallium from this red mud or Bayer liquor. The U.S. currently has no commercial capacity to recover this gallium from its aluminum or alumina production waste streams.
Note: There are current initiatives and pilot projects (like the one funded by the U.S. Department of Defense in Gramercy, Louisiana) exploring technology to recover gallium from bauxite residue, but these are not yet in commercial production.
♻️ Secondary Production (Recycling/Refining)
While the U.S. produces no primary gallium, it does produce high-purity refined gallium from secondary sources.
The Source: A single U.S. refiner (Indium Corporation in New York) upgrades imported low-purity gallium and, importantly, recycles gallium from "new scrap."
New Scrap: This refers to the waste and trimmings generated during the manufacture of gallium-based devices, such as:
Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) wafers
Gallium Nitride (GaN) wafers
LEDs, laser diodes, and integrated circuits.
The U.S. meets its entire critical mineral needs for gallium through imports of low-purity primary metal and finished wafers, supplemented by the domestic recycling/refining of high-purity scrap.
Would you like to know why gallium is such a critical mineral for the U.S.?
Us Federal agency reports on the availability of gallium for industrial purposes in the United States:
U.S. Federal agency reports indicate that the United States has no domestic primary production of low-purity gallium and is 100% net import-reliant to meet its industrial needs. Gallium is considered a critical material due to its essential use in defense, energy, and semiconductor industries and the vulnerability of its supply chain.
Key findings from U.S. federal agency reports, primarily from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of Energy (DOE), include:
Zero Domestic Primary Production: The U.S. has not recovered primary (low-purity, unrefined) gallium since 1987. Demand is entirely satisfied by imports, with major sources historically including China, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others.
Criticality: Gallium is listed as a critical mineral by the USGS and a critical material by the DOE because its supply chain is highly vulnerable to disruption, and it serves an essential function in the manufacturing of key technologies, with no effective substitutes for many defense applications.
Industrial Consumption: About 79% of gallium consumed domestically is in the form of gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), and gallium phosphide wafers, which are essential for integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices like LEDs, laser diodes, and solar cells.
Domestic Resources: While gallium is not currently recovered from U.S. mineral deposits, it occurs in trace amounts in domestic bauxite and zinc ores (e.g., in the Round Top deposit in Texas and the Apex deposit in Utah). These deposits could be a potential future resource, but less than 10% of the contained gallium is potentially recoverable with current technology.
Government Initiatives: Federal agencies, particularly the DOE, are actively working to establish a secure and independent domestic supply chain. The DOE launched the "Technology for Recovery and Advanced Critical-material Extraction–Gallium" (TRACE-Ga) initiative to fund projects that recover gallium from existing U.S. processing streams and waste, reducing foreign dependence.
Supply Chain Vulnerability: The reliance on imports, particularly from China which accounts for 98% of worldwide primary low-purity gallium production, poses a significant economic and national security risk. USGS studies have quantified the potential economic impact of a Chinese export ban, which could result in billions of dollars in lost U.S. GDP.
For detailed statistics and information, refer to the annual USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries and DOE reports on Critical Materials Strategy.
Boo hoo hoo! The USA didn’t even lose a wink of sleep when its government ratcheted up IT restrictions and sanctions against China, coerced Dutch ASML from selling to or servicing existing equipment in China to make advanced semiconductors, got Canada to seize the CFO of Huawei over bogus charges, got Google to ban the use of its software by Huawei, yada yada yada (the list goes on and on and on). And… now… the USA is calling China a bad player? The USA needs to look at itself in the mirror.
It's generally a waste of time to just dump a link out there with no explanation of what it is. People aren't going to click on random links, especially if they've been goatse'd in the past. That is actual a useful article about the prospects of future gallium production outside China, it would be more useful if you'd supplied the description.
Hi Kevin. Just wanted to let you know that I've translated your article into Spanish and posted it here:
https://arrezafe.blogspot.com/2025/12/el-problema-de-las-tierras-raras-en.html
Thank you.
This is interesting, thanks for sharing! On your sentences re “Beijing required its aluminum smelters to go after the gallium…they had to be told because it’s hard work”, well, one way or another, in any system they will told to, so I think its always important to consider how the decision was made to tell them to do so and how the directives were issued. In any system, getting firms to do low-margin, fiddly byproduct recovery (especially when it complicates operations) almost always requires some mix of standards, incentives, procurement pull, licensing conditions, industrial strategy, etc.
So I think a very important question that should follow “were they told?”, is what decision architecture produced the ‘telling’? Was it a centralized command order? A federated party process? A procurement/defense-supply-chain logic that made gallium recovery the condition for access to credit, power, quotas, or contracts? Something else? Without specifying that mechanism, the sentence doesn’t really distinguish China from other possible systems—it mostly just asserts that someone somewhere overcame the “hard work” problem, which is precisely the universal hurdle with byproduct metals.
In the Unites States Old Republic, a similar outcome would likely have came about and it likely would have emerged in a way that way that in part would have been quite similar to how China arrived a it since it would have, like it did in China, largely came from federated party and state/local processes
It sez here: From Gemini AI today:
Currently, there are four primary aluminum smelters in operation in the United States.
🏭 US Primary Aluminum Smelters
These four operational smelters are owned by two companies: Alcoa and Century Aluminum.
Alcoa's operational smelters:
Massena Operations (Massena, New York)
Warrick Operations (Newburgh, Indiana)
Century Aluminum's operational smelters:
Mount Holly Plant (Mount Holly, South Carolina)
Sebree Plant (Sebree, Kentucky)
The US aluminum industry has seen a significant decline in primary smelting due to factors like high energy costs, as producing primary aluminum is an extremely energy-intensive process. The U.S. now relies heavily on secondary aluminum production, which involves recycling scrap metal.
how much gallium is produced in the US from primary and secondary aluminum refineries ?
[{excerpted from below: The U.S. meets its entire critical mineral needs for gallium through imports of low-purity primary metal and finished wafers, supplemented by the domestic recycling/refining of high-purity scrap.]
The United States currently produces no domestic low-purity primary gallium from its aluminum or zinc refining operations.
Historically, the U.S. has been 100% net import-reliant on primary gallium, which is the unrefined, low-purity form recovered as a byproduct of processing aluminum ore (bauxite) and, to a lesser extent, zinc ores.
Here is a breakdown of the production situation:
🚫 Primary Production from Aluminum (Bauxite)
Zero Production: No domestic production of low-purity primary gallium has been reported in the U.S. since 1987.
The Gallium Opportunity: Gallium is naturally present in bauxite (aluminum ore). During the process of refining bauxite into alumina (the Bayer process), most of the gallium concentrates in the caustic process liquor, or red mud waste.
The US Approach: Countries like China command nearly all of the world's primary output because they have installed the necessary capture units to recover gallium from this red mud or Bayer liquor. The U.S. currently has no commercial capacity to recover this gallium from its aluminum or alumina production waste streams.
Note: There are current initiatives and pilot projects (like the one funded by the U.S. Department of Defense in Gramercy, Louisiana) exploring technology to recover gallium from bauxite residue, but these are not yet in commercial production.
♻️ Secondary Production (Recycling/Refining)
While the U.S. produces no primary gallium, it does produce high-purity refined gallium from secondary sources.
The Source: A single U.S. refiner (Indium Corporation in New York) upgrades imported low-purity gallium and, importantly, recycles gallium from "new scrap."
New Scrap: This refers to the waste and trimmings generated during the manufacture of gallium-based devices, such as:
Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) wafers
Gallium Nitride (GaN) wafers
LEDs, laser diodes, and integrated circuits.
The U.S. meets its entire critical mineral needs for gallium through imports of low-purity primary metal and finished wafers, supplemented by the domestic recycling/refining of high-purity scrap.
Would you like to know why gallium is such a critical mineral for the U.S.?
More AI casting doubt on the above report:
Us Federal agency reports on the availability of gallium for industrial purposes in the United States:
U.S. Federal agency reports indicate that the United States has no domestic primary production of low-purity gallium and is 100% net import-reliant to meet its industrial needs. Gallium is considered a critical material due to its essential use in defense, energy, and semiconductor industries and the vulnerability of its supply chain.
Key findings from U.S. federal agency reports, primarily from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Department of Energy (DOE), include:
Zero Domestic Primary Production: The U.S. has not recovered primary (low-purity, unrefined) gallium since 1987. Demand is entirely satisfied by imports, with major sources historically including China, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others.
Criticality: Gallium is listed as a critical mineral by the USGS and a critical material by the DOE because its supply chain is highly vulnerable to disruption, and it serves an essential function in the manufacturing of key technologies, with no effective substitutes for many defense applications.
Industrial Consumption: About 79% of gallium consumed domestically is in the form of gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), and gallium phosphide wafers, which are essential for integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices like LEDs, laser diodes, and solar cells.
Domestic Resources: While gallium is not currently recovered from U.S. mineral deposits, it occurs in trace amounts in domestic bauxite and zinc ores (e.g., in the Round Top deposit in Texas and the Apex deposit in Utah). These deposits could be a potential future resource, but less than 10% of the contained gallium is potentially recoverable with current technology.
Government Initiatives: Federal agencies, particularly the DOE, are actively working to establish a secure and independent domestic supply chain. The DOE launched the "Technology for Recovery and Advanced Critical-material Extraction–Gallium" (TRACE-Ga) initiative to fund projects that recover gallium from existing U.S. processing streams and waste, reducing foreign dependence.
Supply Chain Vulnerability: The reliance on imports, particularly from China which accounts for 98% of worldwide primary low-purity gallium production, poses a significant economic and national security risk. USGS studies have quantified the potential economic impact of a Chinese export ban, which could result in billions of dollars in lost U.S. GDP.
For detailed statistics and information, refer to the annual USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries and DOE reports on Critical Materials Strategy.
Boo hoo hoo! The USA didn’t even lose a wink of sleep when its government ratcheted up IT restrictions and sanctions against China, coerced Dutch ASML from selling to or servicing existing equipment in China to make advanced semiconductors, got Canada to seize the CFO of Huawei over bogus charges, got Google to ban the use of its software by Huawei, yada yada yada (the list goes on and on and on). And… now… the USA is calling China a bad player? The USA needs to look at itself in the mirror.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5LWNvcHk_6f22a22a-903c-4da9-a53d-e796b34fbb9a
It's generally a waste of time to just dump a link out there with no explanation of what it is. People aren't going to click on random links, especially if they've been goatse'd in the past. That is actual a useful article about the prospects of future gallium production outside China, it would be more useful if you'd supplied the description.
Is the Chinese process of extracting gallium from aluminum a trade secret ?
USA elite are lawyers often Jewish who disdain primary production . USA closed 70k factories from 1992 to 2012, but only PJB cared.
Sacklers family opioid epidemic began circa 1998 “non addictive pain killers “ …, and it took 20 years for anyone to notice ….
Chinese elite are Han and are engineers and like their fellow Han
What is PJB