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Major Supply Chains
The essential products, unrolled into their recipes — inputs, transformations, and the one narrow step where control lives.
What it is
A handful of supply chains underpin the physical economy. Each is a recipe of prior products, and each has a chokepoint — the scarce step where pricing power and geopolitical leverage concentrate.
Read the recipe backwards and you see everything embedded in the finished good; find the narrowest step and you have found who really controls it.
Going deeper
Every finished good is a tree of prior products, and unrolling it exposes what it truly depends on. A steel beam is iron ore, coking coal and enormous energy; an EV is that plus a battery, which is lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite processed in specific places. Read backwards, a product is its entire supply chain folded into a price and an emissions figure.
Value and power do not sit at the ends. They concentrate at the scarcest step — usually processing, where capital, energy and know-how gate entry — not at the widely-distributed mine or the commoditised final assembly. Follow a chain to its narrowest point and you have found who actually captures the margin.
Chains are not fixed maps. When a chokepoint bites, the system responds: substitution (a different material or design), thrifting (using less), and recycling (a secondary supply that bypasses the mine entirely). These forces erode chokepoints over years — which is why a chokepoint is a risk to watch, not a permanent lock.
Iron ore + coking coal + limestone → pig iron → crude steel.
Coke and iron ore and limestone go into a blast furnace to make pig iron, then a basic-oxygen furnace with scrap and oxygen makes crude steel, which is rolled to shape. The foundational industrial material.
Who holds the chokepoint
China produces roughly half the world’s steel, so output concentration sits there; upstream, seaborne iron ore is dominated by a few majors (Vale, Rio Tinto, BHP, FMG) and premium coking coal by Australia. The leverage is split: ore at the top, sheer scale in the middle.
Bauxite → alumina → electrolytic smelting → aluminium.
Bauxite is refined to alumina (Bayer process), then reduced to aluminium by electrolysis (Hall-Héroult) — a process so electricity-hungry that aluminium is often called "congealed electricity."
Who holds the chokepoint
Aluminium follows cheap power: China smelts more than half the world’s total, with Russia (Rusal), the Gulf and hydro-rich regions making up much of the rest. Whoever has abundant low-cost electricity holds the real chokepoint, not whoever has the bauxite.
Ore → flotation concentrate → smelting → refined cathode.
Sulfide ore is concentrated by froth flotation, smelted, then refined electrolytically into cathode. Declining ore grades and concentrated smelting capacity make it a structural chokepoint metal.
Who holds the chokepoint
Mining is led by Chile and Peru (Codelco, BHP’s Escondida, Freeport), but the tightening chokepoint is smelting and refining, an increasing share of which sits in China. Declining ore grades push the whole chain toward the processors.
Quartz → polysilicon → wafer → fabrication → packaging.
Purified silicon becomes wafers, patterned in fabs through photolithography (EUV at the leading edge), then packaged. The most complex and most concentrated supply chain on earth.
Who holds the chokepoint
The tightest chokepoints on earth stack here: ASML alone makes EUV lithography machines, TSMC (with Samsung) makes the leading-edge chips, and US firms hold the design tools and much of the core IP. Each is a near-single-point of control, which is why semiconductors are the defining strategic supply chain.
Lithium + nickel + cobalt + graphite → cathode/anode → cell → pack.
Lithium (brine or spodumene), nickel, cobalt and graphite are processed into cathode and anode materials, assembled into cells, then packs. The energy-transition keystone — and a processing chokepoint far more than a mining one.
Who holds the chokepoint
The chokepoint is midstream, not the mine: China dominates cell manufacturing and the processing of cathode and anode materials, plus graphite. Raw lithium is spread (Australia, the South American triangle) and cobalt concentrates in the DRC — but processing is where control sits.
Limestone + clay → kiln (calcination) → clinker → cement.
Limestone and clay are fired in a kiln to make clinker, ground with gypsum into cement. Heavy and cheap relative to its value, so it is made locally — a regional chain with an outsized emissions footprint.
Who holds the chokepoint
Cement is heavy and cheap relative to its value, so it is made and sold locally — there is no global chokepoint, only regional ones. China pours around half the world’s cement; elsewhere the constraint is energy and the industry’s outsized CO₂ footprint.
Crude → refining → naphtha → cracking → monomers → polymers.
Crude oil is refined and its naphtha cut is steam-cracked into ethylene and propylene, then polymerised into plastics. The petrochemical backbone of modern materials.
Who holds the chokepoint
Control sits in refining and steam-cracker capacity, concentrated on the US Gulf Coast, the Middle East (cheap feedstock) and a fast-growing Asian base. Whoever holds crackers holds the gateway from fuel to plastics.
Gas → ammonia (N); phosphate rock (P); potash (K).
Nitrogen comes from natural gas via the Haber-Bosch process, phosphorus from phosphate rock, potassium from mined potash. Three separate chains that feed the world — and each has its own chokepoint.
Who holds the chokepoint
Three separate chokepoints: nitrogen is tied to natural gas (so gas exporters — Russia, the Gulf, the US), phosphate rock is dominated by Morocco (OCP holds the majority of reserves), and potash by a handful of nations (Canada, Belarus, Russia). Fertilizer security is really gas-and-mineral security.
Ore → separation → metals & permanent magnets.
Rare-earth ores are chemically separated (solvent extraction) into individual elements, then made into metals and the permanent magnets that drive motors and turbines. Not rare in the ground — rare in who can separate them.
Who holds the chokepoint
Rare earths are not rare in the ground; the chokepoint is separation and magnet manufacturing, where China holds the overwhelming majority of global capacity. The deposits are worldwide — the ability to refine them into usable metals and magnets is not.
Silica sand + soda ash + limestone → melt → float glass.
Silica sand, soda ash and limestone are melted and floated on molten tin to make flat glass. An ancient recipe whose chokepoints are energy and soda ash.
Who holds the chokepoint
Like cement, flat glass is energy-heavy and shipped regionally, so control is local and tied to energy cost and soda-ash supply rather than a single global gatekeeper. China again leads sheer volume.
Read it honestly
These recipes are the observable, high-confidence part of the chain — deposits, plants and trade flows are real and geolocated. The downstream steps (distribution, end-use) are thinner in open data and partly inferred, and a named chokepoint is a structural read, not a forecast: control is not the same as intent to use it.
Take Major Supply Chains from reference to the live system.