Supply of the minerals underpinning batteries, magnets and electronics is described as concentrated, and the concentration is largely in processing rather than in the ground itself.
Deposits are far more widespread than production
Many of these elements are geologically common and occur across several continents, so the constraint is not the presence of ore but the willingness to extract and treat it.
Extraction requires separating a small proportion of the target element from a large volume of rock, which produces substantial tailings and often radioactive by-products.
Where regulation, permitting and public opposition make that difficult, the deposit stays in the ground while a mine elsewhere supplies the market.
Refining is the real bottleneck
Turning concentrate into usable material involves chemical separation processes that are technically demanding, energy-hungry and require years of accumulated operational knowledge.
The plants are expensive to build and only economic when run at high utilisation, so a new entrant must commit enormous capital before earning anything.
That combination favours whoever built first and kept building, because their costs are already sunk and their expertise cannot be bought off a shelf.
Prices are volatile enough to deter investment
These markets are small relative to major commodities, so a single new mine or a shift in demand can move prices sharply in either direction.
A project taking a decade from discovery to production must survive a full price cycle, and financiers price that risk into the cost of capital.
Established producers can also increase output when a competitor is approaching commissioning, which is a credible threat that has closed projects before they opened.
Vertical integration locks the chain together
Downstream manufacturers of magnets, cathodes and components often sit close to the refineries, physically and commercially, and buy on long-term terms.
A new refinery therefore needs customers who are already integrated with an incumbent supplier, and switching involves qualifying new material through lengthy testing.
The qualification step alone can take years in sectors where component failure is expensive, which slows diversification even where the will exists.
Diversification is proceeding slowly and deliberately
Governments have responded with stockpiles, offtake guarantees, price floors and direct investment, all of which address the financing risk rather than the geology.
Recycling recovers material from end-of-life products and grows naturally as the installed base ages, though it cannot supply a market that is still expanding quickly.
The realistic outcome is a second and third source built over a decade, not a rapid reallocation, because every step in the chain has its own lead time.