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Critical mineralsunderpin the UK economy, technology, energytransitionand industrial resilience. Criticality assessments are widely used to identify the commodities with the highest risk of supply disruption and associated economic impacts. The resulting lists of ‘critical minerals’ increasingly guide national and regional strategies for investment, industrial development and supply-chain resilience.

In 2024, the UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC), hosted by BGS, published its updated UK Criticality Assessment, supported by an improved and more transparent methodology. This assessment used available data covering the last five to ten years and was complemented by several foresight studies on key decarbonisation technologies and the UK demand for critical raw materials up to 2050.

, released by CMIC, evaluates a series of methodological enhancements through improved quantification of economic importance, including trade restrictions and expanded considerations for environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria. The report has been designed to help tailor futureUK criticality assessmentsto the structure of the UK economy, its tradeprofileand strategic industrial sectors more closely.

The report makes five recommendations that should be implemented into the next UK criticality assessment to add further value and benefit:

• better tracking of critical raw materials’ market stability and transparency
• three new indicators to improve measurement of the importance of materials to the UK economy and their flow through the whole domestic supply chain
• accounting for geopolitical risk in trade by considering any interventionist history of trading partners
• expansion of the supply-chain monitoring capacity to the midstream sector
• addition of climate vulnerability to the ESG indicator

Together, these enhancements will deliver a more comprehensive and policy-relevant understanding of criticality, particularlybyimproving the visibility of midstream supply-chain risks. Forimport-reliant nationsliketheUKthat have limited upstreamproduction,accuratetracking of intermediate and manufactured product flows is essential to understanding true supply dependencies andpoints ofintervention.

The new indicators will be rigorously tested through sensitivity analyses in the next assessment cycle, including retrospective evaluation against 2024 results.

Thisreport strengthens theUKcritically assessmentbyintegrating market dynamics, supply-chain interdependencies, geopoliticalrisksand climate vulnerabilities through multiple complementary indicators. Material flow characterisation strengthens trade-based indicators, while the integration of climate vulnerability into the ESG criteria addresses a critical gap with minimal methodological disruption.Corporate concentrationand production forecasting were also evaluated and deemed tooffer the best valuefor targeted,deep-diveanalysesand potential stress-testing of industry supply chains,but data limitationsprevent systematic application in criticality assessments.

Theresult is a moregranular, evidence-basedunderstanding of howdifferent materialsexhibit criticality,whetherthroughmarket opacity, supply-chain centrality, geopolitical concentration, orclimate exposure,enabling tailored intervention strategies matched to specific material risk profiles rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.

Dr Pierre Josso, deputy director of CMIC.