Araw material, also known as afeedstock,unprocessed material, orprimary commodity, is a basic material that is used to producegoods,finished goods, energy, or intermediate materials/Intermediate goods 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 rawlatex,crude oil,cotton,coal, rawbiomass,iron ore,plastic,air,logs, andwater.[1] The term secondary raw material denotes waste material which has been recycled and injected back into use as productive material.[2]
Supply chains typically begin with the acquisition or extraction of raw materials.[3] For example, theEuropean Commission notes that food supply chains commence in the agricultural phase of food production.[4]
Bob Heaney reported in 2014 that raw materialdeliveries in full/on time were among the least-tracked activities within supply chain operations, with only 43% of companies' supply chain senior staff surveyed by theAberdeen Group reporting that they tracked raw material deliveries, and only 19% having this as an automated process.[5]
A 2022 report on changes affectinginternational trade noted that improving sourcing of raw materials has become one of the main objectives of companies reconfiguring their supply chains.[6]
In a 2022 survey conducted bySAP, 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.[7] Forecasting for 2023, 50% of respondents expect a reduced availability of raw materials in the US to drive supply chain disruptions.[8]
Raw materials markets are affected by consumer behavior, supply chain uncertainty,manufacturing disruptions, and regulations, amongst other factors. This results involatile 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.[9]
Whilepottery originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought to light mostly through theNeolithic Revolution. 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-clayceramics, Neolithic communities also createdkilns that were able to fire such materials to remove most of thewater to create very stable and hard materials. Without the presence ofclay 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 ofmetallurgy was possible once theBronze andIron Ages came upon the people that lived there.[11]
Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into a usable state. Metallicores are firstprocessed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in afoundry. Foundries thensmelt the ore into usable metal that may bealloyed with other materials to improve certain properties.[12] One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world isiron, and combined withnickel, this material makes up over 35% of the material in the Earth'sinner andouter core.[13] The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 BC was calledmeteoric iron and was found on the surface of the Earth. This type ofiron 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 theEarth 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.[14]
Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today areHematite andMagnetite. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes.[15] The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine.[16] One of the first sources of iron ore isbog iron. Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains.[17]
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.[18] An example of this is theDemocratic Republic of the Congo.[citation needed]
Elizabeth Kolbert, "Needful Things: The raw materials for the world we've built come at a cost" (largely based onEd Conway,Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization, Knopf, 2023;Vince Beiser,The World in a Grain; andChip Colwell,So Much Stuff: How Humans Discovered Tools, Invented Meaning, and Made More of Everything, Chicago),The New Yorker, 30 October 2023, pp. 20–23. Kolbert mainly discusses the importance to modern civilization, and the finite sources, of six raw materials: high-purityquartz (needed to producesilicon chips),sand,iron,copper,petroleum (which Conway lumps together with anotherfossil fuel,natural gas), andlithium. Kolbert summarizes archeologist Colwell's review of the evolution oftechnology, which has ended up giving theGlobal North a superabundance of "stuff", at an unsustainable cost to the world'senvironment and reserves of raw materials.
