Feb 15 2007
Raw materials such as metals and minerals account for 40 per cent of the production costs of industry, energy for only 1.6 per cent. All the more astonishing that availability, cost-effectiveness and utilisation efficiency have only been studied in depth for the raw materials used to generate energy such as coal, oil or gas; there are hardly any reliable data on metallic or mineral resources. But it is here, in particular, that industry bears a high cost risk if supply problems were to occur.
How high this risk is has now been examined by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research in Karlsruhe together with the RWI Essen in a study for the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. For the most important metals and industrial minerals – among others, copper, tantalum, platinum, graphite and fluorite - the institutes examined how global economic growth and technology progress affect demand and what consequences this has for price development and availability up to 2025.
To do so, the ISI employed a new research approach analogous to the well known energy demand forecasting which evaluated for the first time the specific demand for raw materials and decoupled this from speculative economic growth. The results turned out to be very different: While current technology trends, mainly in electronics, are increasing the specific demand for tantalum, for copper, the effects which increase and decrease demand are more or less balanced, but there will probably be a significant drop in the future demand for fluorite.
If German industry were to exploit all the available efficiency potentials, it could save 120 billion Euro each year – 20 per cent of the costs of the raw materials – and much more than all the previous cuts in non-wage labour costs. Germany has recognized this and is now increasingly focusing on recycling, lightweight construction, nanotechnology, miniaturisation and new production processes. 56 per cent of the copper consumed in Germany is already produced from copper scrap; globally, this figure is only 13 per cent. ISI project leader, Gerhard Angerer: "Despite this success, raw material research should be extended and placed on the same level as energy research". The results would not only improve the sustainability of resource use, but open up effective rationalization potentials to industry at the same time, which would strengthen its global competitive position on the turbulent global raw material markets.