Processing is Europe’s tightest point
In 2025 China produced about 94% of the world’s battery-grade graphite. For most materials, processing is where supply is most concentrated.
Source: IEA 2026; USGS 2026
From 9 December, black mass is hazardous waste
From 9 December 2026 black mass and most lithium-ion battery waste count as hazardous waste in the EU.
Europe’s defence industry runs on twelve materials
NATO named 12 defence-critical raw materials in December 2024.
Press kit
Figures, charts, data, pictures and papers from the Atlas, free to use with credit.
Journal
Notes
Inside the Atlas: method and sources
Which datasets the Atlas uses, where they disagree and how each figure is chosen.
What a 75 kWh car battery holds
About 66 kg of graphite, 40 kg of nickel and 9 kg of lithium, according to the IEA.
Source: IEA, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions (2021)
106
46 new Strategic Projects, 106 in total
The Commission’s second call adds 46 projects in 16 member states; 19 are in recycling.
Source: European Commission, selections of March 2025, June 2025 and October 2026; summed by Hercinia
Twelve allies plan shared stocks
Twelve NATO allies launched a joint project in July 2026 to buy, store, transport and manage critical raw materials for defence. No budget, volumes or materials have been published.
Source: NATO, 7 July 2026
Research
Papers
Longer pieces from the Atlas, also as PDF.
Where Europe’s supply sits
The 34 critical raw materials and potash: how much of each the EU imports, at which stage supply concentrates and which products and industries depend on them.
Sources: European Commission, 2023 study; USGS 2026; IEA 2026; Eurostat Comext
Read the paper, with PDF
The 2030 gap
Where the EU stands against its 2030 benchmarks for extraction, processing and recycling: what its own deposits could supply, what it spends on imports and what is still missing.
Sources: European Court of Auditors, Special report 04/2026, Critical raw materials for the energy transition; European Commission; Eurostat Comext
Read the paper, with PDF
When supply stops
Twenty-one cuts in supply since 2010, what they cost European industry and how other countries prepare for the next one.
Sources: MOFCOM; IEA 2026; USGS 2026; CLEPA; JOGMEC; NATO
Read the paper, with PDF
What the words mean
Critical and strategic, benchmark and target, resource and reserve: twelve groups of terms that are often confused, as EU law and the industry’s reporting codes define them.
Sources: Regulation (EU) 2024/1252; European Commission; CRIRSCO and PERC; OECD
Read the paper, with PDF
Press
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- Press office
- About Hercinia
Hercinia is a Luxembourg company set up to acquire, finance and develop critical raw material deposits in Europe and the plants that process them.
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