by Peter Zeihan on February 3, 2023
Today we’re talking about the overlooked redheaded stepchild between mining raw materials and incorporating those into a product…processing. Essentially throwing tons of energy at the ore through several steps and facilities, converting them into usable materials like aluminum or steel.
For the vast majority of materials, this processing is carried out in 1 of 2 locations – China or Russia. This is a result of subsidies or cheap energy. However, all of that is changing thanks to the collapsing demographics of these two societies.
The reason for the redheaded stepchild analogy is that processing is about to become very annoying for the rest of the world. Not because it’s expensive or difficult to do but because the decrease in supply is culminating with an increase in demand thanks to the green movement.
