@timofeyA single metal quietly holds up a lot of modern infrastructure, and the 2023 production map for it is lopsided in a way that's hard to process. Niobium, the specialty metal in question, feeds into advanced materials, aerospace alloys, pipeline steel, automotive parts and high-strength steels. World Mining Data 2025 is where the 2023 figures come from, reported as Nb₂O₅ content in metric tonnes, and the global total landed at 117,875. Brazil's share of that was 109,520, or 92.91% of everything on the board. Canada added 6,700, which pushed the two of them to a combined 98.60% of world output. After that the list gets thin fast. DR Congo reported 560, Russia 505, Rwanda 310, Nigeria 185, China 43, Ethiopia 35, Mozambique 16, and Burundi closed it out at 1. This is part of the Worldly Original Content series, and only 10 producing countries show up in the data, so nothing was invented to stretch it into a longer ranking.

@timofeyA single metal quietly holds up a lot of modern infrastructure, and the 2023 production map for it is lopsided in a way that's hard to process. Niobium, the specialty metal in question, feeds into advanced materials, aerospace alloys, pipeline steel, automotive parts and high-strength steels. World Mining Data 2025 is where the 2023 figures come from, reported as Nb₂O₅ content in metric tonnes, and the global total landed at 117,875. Brazil's share of that was 109,520, or 92.91% of everything on the board. Canada added 6,700, which pushed the two of them to a combined 98.60% of world output. After that the list gets thin fast. DR Congo reported 560, Russia 505, Rwanda 310, Nigeria 185, China 43, Ethiopia 35, Mozambique 16, and Burundi closed it out at 1. This is part of the Worldly Original Content series, and only 10 producing countries show up in the data, so nothing was invented to stretch it into a longer ranking.