Who makes the chip metals — and who can switch them off?
Gallium — Ga — melts in the palm of your hand and, as gallium nitride and gallium arsenide, is the radar, the 5G base station, the LED, the fast charger and the power stage of the AI data centre. Germanium — Ge — was the first transistor, is the dopant in the core of nearly every optical fibre, the lens of every thermal-imaging sight and the wafer under the solar cells that power most satellites. Neither is mined: gallium is skimmed from the liquor of alumina refineries, germanium from zinc smelters and, in China, from germanium-rich coal — which is why China, with the world's alumina and zinc industries, makes 99% of the world's primary gallium and about nine-tenths of its germanium, and why no price signal can quickly conjure more anywhere else. On 3 July 2023 Beijing put both under export licence — the first critical-minerals salvo of the chip war. On 3 December 2024 it banned exports to the United States outright. On 9 November 2025 it suspended that ban for a year, to 27 November 2026, while cutting Japan's military buyers off in January. The market split in two: a Chinese price and a Western price three to ten times higher, and a line of new plants from Western Australia to Greece to British Columbia racing the clock. This page tracks where gallium and germanium come from, who refines them to the purity a wafer needs, who can turn the supply off and who is building alternatives — using open data from USGS, BGS, S&P Global, the IEA, Chinese customs and company disclosures. Built for the chip-metal chain — alumina and zinc producers, refiners, compound-semiconductor, photonics, fibre and infrared-optics makers, defence and aerospace procurement — and for geopolitics researchers and think tanks.
0of the world's primary gallium came from China in 2025 — 900 of about 900 tonnes; Russia and Japan made the rest (USGS estimate)
0of world germanium production is Chinese (S&P Global, 2026); roughly two-thirds once Umicore's and Teck's refined output is counted (industry estimates)
0rise in the European germanium price — $1,392/kg in 2023 to $8,000–10,000 in Rotterdam in April 2026 (Argus via USGS, Fastmarkets)
0US net import reliance on gallium — no primary production since 1987 — and more than 50% on germanium (USGS 2026); the US ban's suspension expires 27 November 2026
Interactive map
The gallium & germanium world map
The alumina refineries, zinc smelters and coal plants that yield the two metals as byproducts, the refiners and wafer, fibre and optics plants that turn them into devices, the Western plants that closed when Chinese supply was cheap — and the projects now being financed to replace it, from Wagerup to Trail to Viotia. Tap a marker for details; toggle layers below. Circle size ≈ scale of operation.
Gallium and germanium have no mines of their own: they ride on the alumina and zinc industries, so a "source" on this map is a refinery that happens to recover them. China's alumina provinces are mapped at plant or district level; the Western chain is a handful of named plants — Olen, Trail, Langelsheim, Quapaw, St George — each of which is a single point of failure in its own right.
From Bayer liquor to wafer
Two metals, a dozen disguises
Gallium leaves the alumina refinery as a crude 4N metal and must be refined to six or seven nines — 99.9999% — before it becomes trimethylgallium for an LED reactor or a gallium arsenide wafer; germanium leaves the zinc smelter as a chloride, becomes a dioxide, a zone-refined ingot, a wafer, a lens or a few parts per million inside a strand of glass. Each form has its own buyers, its own export-control code and, since August 2023, its own licence. Tap a stage.
The journey of a kilo of gallium (and of germanium)
From a Bayer-process tank in Henan or a zinc smelter in Yunnan to the transmit-receive module in a radar and the glass core of a transatlantic cable. Six stages, each with its own bottleneck — and in 2026 the bottleneck sits at stage three, where the ultra-purification that a wafer needs happens mostly inside one country's licence regime.
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Production & capacity
Where the chip metals come from
Primary gallium: production and capacity, 2025
Tonnes of low-purity primary gallium, log scale (USGS estimates)
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (2025 figures are estimates; world production ~900 t, up from 848 t in 2024, against capacity of ~1,700 t). China made 900 t on 1,600 t of capacity — 99% of the world and barely half its own potential; Russia (Pikalevo) and Japan (Dowa's recycling) made 6 and 3 t; the ~100 t of capacity in Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Korea and Ukraine stood idle. USGS revised 2024 up from 760 to 848 t after switching its source to Asian Metal.
Germanium production by country, 2024
Tonnes of germanium, industry estimate (world ~230 t); USGS publishes no world total
Source: industry compilation (investingermanium.com, 2024): China ~145 t, Belgium (Umicore, Olen) and Canada (Teck, Trail) 12–15 t each, Russia 10–15 t, United States 7–9 t, Japan 5–8 t, Germany 2–3 t; plotted at range midpoints. S&P Global (August 2026) attributes about 91% of production to China on a primary basis and counts ~39 t a year of recycling; BGS records China at 200 t in 2023 and 2024. Counting at the furnace or at the refinery is the difference between 63% and 91%.
A decade of concentration: world output and China's share
Primary gallium and germanium metal production, tonnes — world and China, BGS 2014–2024
Source: BGS World Mineral Statistics (gallium, primary; germanium metal). World gallium output more than doubled from 2016 to 2024 and every tonne of the increase was Chinese — the alumina boom and the 2022–24 LED, RF and magnet demand pulled it out of Bayer liquor that had always contained it. Germanium doubled from 2020, again entirely in China (Yunnan's coal and zinc). BGS's germanium series omits Belgium and Canada, whose refiners process imported and recycled feed; USGS puts 2024 gallium at 848 t.
A tonne of bauxite contains about 50 grams of gallium and a tonne of zinc concentrate a few hundred grams of germanium; neither is worth mining for, and both are recovered only where someone has bolted an extraction circuit onto an alumina refinery or a zinc smelter. That is the first chokepoint, and China — with more than half the world's alumina and zinc capacity — owns it. The second is purity: crude 4N gallium is useless to a wafer fab until it is refined to 6N or 7N, and germanium dioxide useless to a fibre plant until it is a chloride of optical grade. S&P Global counts 62% of high-purity gallium refining capacity in China too. When Beijing licensed exports in 2023 it licensed metal, oxide, chloride, arsenide and nitride alike — the whole ladder, not one rung.
Processing geography
China's alumina and coal provinces, two Western germanium refiners, a Japanese recycler — and the American plants the Pentagon is paying to grow
🇨🇳Chalco and the Bayer-liquor machine
Gallium follows alumina: China refines most of the world's bauxite, and Aluminum Corporation of China (Chalco) alone runs about 200 t a year of gallium capacity at its Zhongzhou, Shanxi, Guangxi and Guizhou refineries (146 t produced in 2022, per SMM), with the Shandong private giants and dozens of smaller circuits behind it. Capacity of 1,600 t against output of 900 t means China can double exports or halve them without building anything — the leverage behind every announcement since 2023. High-purity refiners such as Vital Materials in Guangdong and the wafer makers of Beijing turn the crude metal into the 6N–7N grades, trimethylgallium and GaAs substrates that fabs actually buy. Guinea, which mined about a third of the world's bauxite in 2024 (BGS), refines almost none of it into alumina, so the gallium in its ore is recovered, if at all, wherever the ore is refined, mostly in China.
🇨🇳Yunnan's coal and zinc germanium
Most Chinese germanium comes from Yunnan: Yunnan Lincang Xinyuan Germanium extracts it from germanium-rich lignite (47.6 t a year of ingot capacity, with a 75 t expansion under way) and Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium (about 10 t) from zinc concentrate; Inner Mongolia's coal-fired plants add 20–30 t and Hunan's Zhuzhou Smelter Group, China's largest zinc smelter, the rest. Nanjing Germanium and Vital refine to the 5N–6N optical and electronic grades. Chinese germanium-metal exports fell from 36.7 t in January–September 2023 to 7.5 t in the same months of 2025 (USGS) — and in 2025 Russia was the largest buyer.
🇧🇪Olen and Trail: the West's two refiners
Umicore's plant at Olen, Belgium, is the largest germanium refiner outside China — a European Union strategic project under the Critical Raw Materials Act since March 2025 — fed by recycled fibre and lens scrap and, since October 2024, by the first germanium concentrates shipped from Gécamines' Big Hill slag in Lubumbashi, a flow the Belgian state guaranteed in July 2026. Teck's Trail smelter in British Columbia recovers germanium from Red Dog zinc concentrate and in July 2026 won C$400 million from the Canada Growth Fund toward a C$850 million plan to double germanium output and add gallium. Germany's PPM Pure Metals at Langelsheim refines both metals for Europe's chip and optics makers.
🇺🇸No primary gallium — and a row of DPA cheques
The United States has produced no primary gallium since 1987 and imports 100% of it (25 t of metal in 2025, twice 2024's volume, mostly from Japan, Germany and Canada); its germanium comes from Umicore's optics plant at Quapaw, Oklahoma, 5N Plus's wafer plant at St George, Utah, Indium Corporation in New York and recycling. Since September 2025 the Department of War has written Defense Production Act cheques to Lattice Materials ($18.5 million, infrared optics), ElementUSA ($29.9 million, gallium from Atalco's Gramercy alumina refinery), 5N Plus ($18.1 million), Umicore Quapaw ($11.8 million) and ReElement ($25 million) — and $174 million to Alcoa for a gallium plant in Western Australia. The $12 billion "Project Vault" stockpile announced in February 2026 covers both metals.
Sources: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (production, capacity, US imports and history); SMM (Chalco capacity and 2022 output, 2 August 2023); Yunnan Germanium and Yunnan Chihong disclosures; Asian Metal (Inner Mongolia coal germanium); S&P Global Gallium and Germanium market reports (August 2026); Umicore; Gécamines/STL (October 2024 first export; Belgian guarantee, July 2026); Teck and the Canada Growth Fund (7 July 2026); US Department of War DPA Title III notices (26 September 2025 to 13 July 2026); Alcoa (14 July 2026); White House (Project Vault, 2 February 2026).
Where China's exports went — and stopped
Chinese exports of germanium metal (January–September) and gallium (calendar year), tonnes (Chinese customs via USGS, rawmaterials.net and Tradium)
Source: USGS MCS 2026 (germanium metal, January–September 2023, 2024 and 2025: 36,656, 18,787 and 7,520 kg; 2025 buyers Russia 28%, Belgium 26%, Germany 26%, Japan 18%); Chinese customs via rawmaterials.net (gallium: ~44,800 kg in 2023, 69,440 kg in 2024, +55%) and Tradium (January–August 2026 ≈ 25,000 kg of gallium and ≈ 7,800 kg of germanium, with April at 3 kg and August at 350 kg). Full-year 2025 gallium exports are disputed: CSIS reports unwrought shipments down 94%, trade-press tallies of all forms give ~62,600 kg — so 2025 is omitted here. Exports have become a licence-by-licence trickle whose monthly swings — zero one month, 15 tonnes the next — are the market signal.
From Bayer liquor and zinc dust to wafer, fibre and lens
The gallium route (top) and the germanium route (bottom) share one feature: both start as somebody else's waste stream. Scroll sideways on mobile →
"4N" is 99.99% purity, "6N" 99.9999%: the crude gallium an alumina refinery produces is 4N, a wafer needs 6N–7N. MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapour deposition) grows the GaN and GaAs layers of LEDs and RF chips from trimethylgallium gas. GeCl₄ is the form germanium takes to dope the core of an optical fibre, GeO₂ the catalyst in PET resin; germanium wafers carry the triple-junction solar cells of satellites. Both metals are recovered at rates far below what the host ores contain: most of the world's gallium is still tipped out with the red mud.
Demand
The metals of seeing, sensing and switching
Gallium and germanium are tiny markets — about 1,000 and 340 tonnes a year — that sit under enormous ones: every phone, radar, LED, data-centre power supply, fibre cable, thermal camera and satellite. A gram of gallium is worth cents in the device it enables, which is why demand barely flinches at a price that has tripled, and why a licence in Beijing matters more than any price.
What gallium is used for
Share of world gallium demand by first use, 2025 (S&P Global)
Source: S&P Global Commodity Insights, Gallium market report (August 2026): semiconductors — GaAs and GaN for RF, power, LEDs and ICs — about 61%, neodymium-iron-boron magnets 36%, other (CIGS solar, medical, alloys) 3%. In the United States, integrated circuits take 73% and optoelectronics 26% (USGS MCS 2026). S&P expects demand to grow from ~1,000 t in 2025 to ~1,740 t by 2030.
What germanium is used for
Share of world germanium demand by first use, 2025 (S&P Global; ~343 t)
Source: S&P Global Commodity Insights, Germanium market report (August 2026): fibre optics ~40%, infrared and night-vision optics ~25%, solar cells and electronics ~24%, metallurgy and chemicals ~6%, PET catalysts ~5%; demand ~343 t in 2025 rising to ~408 t by 2030, of which recycling supplies ~39 t. USGS ranks US uses as fibre optics, infrared optics, electronics and solar, and radiation detectors.
The forces pulling demand
A power-electronics boom, a radar arms race, a fibre build-out — and a substitution ceiling
⚡GaN everywhere
Gallium nitride switches faster and hotter than silicon: it is the 5G base-station amplifier, the 100-watt phone charger, the onboard charger and inverter of the electric car and, since 2024, the 800-volt power stage of the AI data centre, where Nvidia's rack designs specify GaN and silicon carbide. Gallium arsenide remains the amplifier and switch of every phone's radio and every satellite link. Semiconductors already take ~61% of gallium; S&P's 1,740 t demand forecast for 2030 is driven almost entirely by them.
📡The radar arms race
Active electronically scanned array radars — in fighters, ships, air-defence batteries and the counter-drone systems of 2025–26 — are built from thousands of GaN transmit-receive modules; CSIS counts about 77 kg of gallium in a THAAD battery. Germanium is the window, lens and dome of thermal-imaging and night-vision optics, missile seekers and targeting pods, and the wafer under the triple-junction solar cells that power military and commercial satellites — a use growing with every mega-constellation launched.
🧲The quiet third: magnets and fibre
The surprise in S&P's breakdown is that 36% of gallium goes into neodymium-iron-boron magnets, where a fraction of a percent improves coercivity at high temperature — tying gallium demand to EV motors, wind turbines and the rare-earth controls of 2025. For germanium the bedrock is glass: about 40% dopes the core of optical fibre, and the data-centre and subsea-cable build-out of 2024–26 has lifted fibre demand just as Chinese exports fell. Substitutes exist — silicon, silicon carbide, indium phosphide, zinc selenide optics, titanium or antimony PET catalysts — at a cost in performance.
~1,740 tof gallium demand forecast for 2030 (S&P Global), against primary supply of ~900 t in 2025 and Chinese capacity of 1,600 t — the gap is China's to fill or withhold; every Western project announced to date adds about 300 t a year by 2028–30.
Geopolitics
A licence, a ban, a truce and a cliff
The gallium and germanium controls of July 2023 were China's first use of critical minerals as a weapon in the chip war — before graphite, antimony, rare earths or tungsten — and every measure since has been built on their template: licence first, ban later, suspend when it suits, aim at military end users always. The sequence, from the first transistor to the November 2026 cliff.
1875 – 1962
From Mendeleev's gaps to the first transistor and the first LED
Both metals were predicted by Mendeleev before they were found: gallium by Lecoq de Boisbaudran in Paris in 1875 ("eka-aluminium"), germanium by Clemens Winkler in Freiberg in 1886 ("eka-silicon"). Germanium made the first transistor at Bell Labs in December 1947 and the first commercial semiconductors; silicon displaced it by the 1960s, but germanium found the infrared window, the fibre-optic core and the space solar cell. Gallium arsenide gave the world its first practical visible LED — Nick Holonyak's red diode of 1962 — and in 2014 the blue gallium-nitride LED won Akasaki, Amano and Nakamura the Nobel Prize.
1990s – 2016
China's alumina boom closes the West's gallium plants
Gallium was once recovered in Hungary, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Germany, Japan and the United States — which has had no primary production since 1987. As China's alumina output grew from a tenth of the world's to more than half, Chinese Bayer-liquor gallium flooded the market at prices no stand-alone plant could match: Kazakhstan's Pavlodar stopped around 2013, Germany's Ingal plant at Stade — Europe's last — in 2016, Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia by 2022. Germanium followed the zinc industry east and, uniquely, into Yunnan's coal. By 2023 USGS counted China at 98% of primary gallium.
3 Jul 2023
The first licence of the chip war
Days after the Netherlands and Japan tightened exports of chip-making tools, China's Ministry of Commerce and customs administration announce export licensing for gallium and germanium items — metal, oxides, chlorides, arsenide, nitride, antimonide and more — from 1 August 2023, citing national security. Exports fall to zero in August and September, then resume to licensed buyers. Western gallium prices double within months; by 2024 Chinese gallium exports are 55% higher than in 2023 (69 t) while germanium exports fall 30% (29 t). The template for every control that follows is set.
3 Dec 2024
The ban on the United States
The day after Washington's latest chip sanctions, MOFCOM Announcement 2024 No. 46 prohibits, "in principle", any export of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States and bans dual-use exports to US military end users, with extraterritorial reach. Rotterdam gallium is $470–550 a kilo that week (Fastmarkets); in 2025 a single 3 kg shipment of Chinese gallium reaches the United States (CSIS) and Chinese germanium-metal exports to all buyers fall to 7.5 t for January–September, with Russia the largest customer. The European germanium average more than doubles from $1,991 in 2024 to about $4,100 in 2025 (USGS).
Sep – Nov 2025
Washington writes cheques — and Beijing suspends the ban
The Department of War starts funding a domestic chain under the Defense Production Act: Lattice Materials ($18.5 million, 26 September), ElementUSA for gallium from Louisiana alumina ($29.9 million, 20 November), 5N Plus ($18.1 million, 15 December). On 30 October Presidents Trump and Xi meet in Busan; on 9 November MOFCOM Announcement 2025 No. 72 suspends the US ban until 27 November 2026 — licensing and the military-end-user ban stay in force. Umicore's Olen plant is already an EU strategic project (March 2025); in December the EU's RESourceEU plan proposes a pilot stockpile.
Jan – Feb 2026
Japan is cut off; Washington chooses offtakes over tariffs
On 6 January, after Prime Minister Takaichi's Taiwan remarks, China bans dual-use exports to Japanese military end users; gallium and germanium shipments to Japan are zero in January and February. On 14 January President Trump's Section 232 proclamation on processed critical minerals imposes no tariffs or quotas and orders negotiations on price floors and offtakes instead; on 30 January Umicore Quapaw gets $11.8 million under the DPA; on 2 February the administration announces "Project Vault", a $12 billion stockpile for all 60 listed minerals, both metals included. Western gallium passes $1,700 a kilo (Strategic Metals Invest).
Mar – Jul 2026
The Western rebuild goes to final investment decision
Rio Tinto and Indium Corporation start building a gallium pilot plant at the Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Quebec (2 March; first metal 2027, 40 t a year option). Western gallium sets a record near $1,850 in April (CSIS) as Chinese exports fall to 3 kg for the month; Rotterdam germanium reaches $8,000–10,000 (Fastmarkets). Greece approves Metlen's ~€300 million gallium investment at its Viotia alumina refinery (15 May; 50 t a year from 2027, €90 million from the EIB). The EU shortlists gallium for its first pilot stockpile (20 May). Teck wins C$400 million from the Canada Growth Fund toward doubling germanium and adding gallium at Trail (7 July); ReElement gets $25 million (13 July); Alcoa takes the final investment decision on a 100 t a year gallium plant at Wagerup, Western Australia, with $174 million from the US Department of War and Japanese partners Sojitz and JOGMEC (14 July); the IEA's Global Critical Minerals Outlook (16 July) puts European gallium at five times the Chinese price and germanium at three.
Aug – Oct 2026
Reference prices, a licence trickle and the November cliff
S&P Global publishes Western reference prices for gallium and germanium and the US Trade Representative welcomes them (7 August) — the price-floor mechanism of the January proclamation taking shape; Metlen signs a US offtake (29 July). Chinese gallium exports fall to 350 kg in August after 7.2 t in July (Tradium), germanium exports hit a 2026 high of 2.8 t, mostly to Russia. On 7 October Western 4N gallium is quoted at $2,828 a kilo and 5N germanium at $9,939 (Strategic Metals Invest) against Chinese domestic prices of about $229 and $3,586 (SMM). ERG's 15 t a year gallium plant at Pavlodar is due to start in the fourth quarter. The suspension of China's US ban expires on 27 November 2026; no extension has been announced.
Sources: USGS MCS 2024–2026; Chinese Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs announcements 2023 No. 23, 2024 No. 46, 2025 No. 72 and 2026 No. 1; CNBC (9 November 2025); CSIS, "The US–China trade truce has not solved the gallium problem" (11 May 2026); Fastmarkets; Chinese customs data via rawmaterials.net, SMM and Tradium; US Department of War DPA Title III notices; White House Proclamation of 14 January 2026 (via Covington) and Project Vault (2 February 2026); USTR statement of 7 August 2026; Rio Tinto, Metlen, Teck, Alcoa, ERG and Umicore disclosures; IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026; Strategic Metals Invest and SMM quotations (7 October 2026); Nobel Prize (2014) and Bell Labs histories.
Trade & prices
One metal, two prices
Neither gallium nor germanium trades on an exchange. Each price is an assessment — Fastmarkets, Argus, SMM, Asian Metal and, since August 2026, S&P Global's Western reference prices — of a trade measured in tonnes, which is why a licence decision can move it 30% in a month and why "the gallium price" now means two numbers: the Chinese domestic one, and the Western one that everybody outside the licence list has to pay.
Germanium: the European price, 2019–2026
Germanium metal, 99.999%, Europe, US$ per kilogram — annual averages and the 2026 spike
Sources: Argus via USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024–2026 (annual averages: $1,236 in 2019, $1,046, $1,187, $1,294, $1,392 in 2023, $1,991 in 2024, ~$4,100 in 2025; Europe metal rose from $3,150 in January to $5,380 in October 2025); Fastmarkets Rotterdam $8,000–10,000 in April 2026 (plotted at the midpoint); Strategic Metals Invest 5N quotation $9,939 on 7 October 2026. Germanium dioxide followed at roughly 60% of the metal price ($2,500 average in 2025).
The two-tier market, October 2026
US$ per kilogram — Chinese domestic price vs Western quotation, 4N gallium and 5N germanium
Sources: SMM (China domestic 4N gallium ~$229/kg and 5N germanium ingot ~$3,586/kg on 30 September 2026; Western in-warehouse 99.99% germanium ~$6,355–6,405); Strategic Metals Invest (Western 4N gallium $2,828 and 5N germanium $9,939 on 7 October 2026 — retail-scale quotations that run above wholesale assessments); CSIS (Western gallium record ~$1,850 in April 2026, +200% since January 2025). The IEA's July 2026 outlook put the European price at about five times China's for gallium and three times for germanium; whichever quotation one picks, the gap is the widest of any critical mineral.
Who still buys Chinese germanium
Destinations of China's germanium-metal exports, January–September 2025 (7.5 t in total)
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (Chinese customs data): Russia 28%, Belgium 26%, Germany 26%, Japan 18%, others 2%. The United States received none — its 2025 germanium-metal imports fell 67% to 7 t while dioxide imports rose 55% to 17 t (USGS). Russia's share, up from near nothing before 2024, is the mirror image of the Western squeeze.
How this market actually trades
Four gates, two metals
The licence gate
Since 1 August 2023 every Chinese export of gallium or germanium metal, oxide, chloride, arsenide or nitride needs a Ministry of Commerce licence under the Export Control Law, granted case by case; since 3 December 2024 nothing may go to US military end users, and since 6 January 2026 nothing dual-use to Japanese ones. The civilian US ban has been suspended since 9 November 2025 — until 27 November 2026. The result: monthly exports that swing from 3 kg to 15 t, and buyers who stockpile when a licence lands.
The assessment problem
With no exchange contract, every price is a poll of a few dozen trades. The Chinese domestic quotation (SMM, Asian Metal) reflects a market with 1,600 t of capacity and 900 t of demand; the Rotterdam one (Fastmarkets, Argus) a market where every kilo needed a licence — which is why the same 4N gallium can cost $229 in Shanghai and $2,800 in a Western warehouse. S&P Global's reference prices, launched in August 2026 and welcomed by the USTR as the basis for the price floors of the January Section 232 proclamation, are an attempt to give Western projects a bankable number.
The American door
US imports of gallium metal doubled to 25 t in 2025 at a unit value of $580 a kilo, almost none of it directly from China; germanium-metal imports fell 67% to 7 t and dioxide rose 55% to 17 t. The MFN tariff is 3% on gallium and 2.6% on germanium — the January 2026 proclamation added none — and the real barriers are Beijing's licence and the Western price. Net import reliance: 100% for gallium, more than 50% for germanium (USGS).
The scrap and the stockpile
Recycling supplies about 39 t a year of germanium (S&P) — fibre preforms, lens blanks, wafer kerf — and a growing share of gallium from GaAs wafer scrap and MOCVD waste at Dowa in Japan, Neo in Ontario and the US refiners; S&P counts ~280 t a year of secondary gallium capacity worldwide. The US Defense Logistics Agency held about 14,000 kg of germanium metal at the end of 2022 and no gallium; Project Vault (February 2026) and the EU's pilot stockpile (gallium shortlisted May 2026) are the first attempts to change that.
Sources: MOFCOM announcements; S&P Global (reference prices; secondary supply); USTR (7 August 2026); USGS MCS 2026 (US trade, tariffs, import reliance, stockpile); Payne Institute (29 July 2026, DLA germanium); Fastmarkets, SMM, Asian Metal (assessment methodologies); Covington (Section 232 proclamation, 14 January 2026); Mining Weekly (EU stockpile shortlist, 20 May 2026).
Concentration risk
The China chokepoint
No critical mineral is more Chinese than gallium: 99% of primary production, 94% of capacity, 62% of high-purity refining — and the capacity to double output without building a plant. Germanium is close behind at roughly nine-tenths of primary output. The leverage is structural, not geological: the metals are wherever alumina and zinc are refined, and that is China.
99%
of the world's primary gallium was produced in China in 2025 — 900 of ~900 t (USGS estimates). Its share along the two chains:
Sources: USGS MCS 2026 (primary gallium production 2025: China 900 t of ~900 t; capacity 1,600 t of ~1,700 t); S&P Global Gallium and Germanium market reports, August 2026 (China 62% of high-purity gallium refining capacity; ~91% of germanium production; ex-China germanium capacity 31 t); industry estimate of 2024 germanium output (China 145 of ~230 t, ~63%, investingermanium.com); China's share of world alumina production ~57% (International Aluminium Institute) and refined zinc ~50% (ILZSG), the host industries.
Dual use
The metals in the radar — and in the night-vision sight
Gallium and germanium are the materials of seeing and sensing: GaN is the transmit-receive module of every modern radar and jammer, gallium arsenide the amplifier of every military satellite link, germanium the lens of every thermal sight and the wafer of every satellite solar array. Which is why the first critical mineral China weaponised was these two, why the ban targets military end users even while the civilian one is suspended, and why the Pentagon has spent 2025–26 writing Defense Production Act cheques to a chain that barely existed.
📡GaN radar and electronic warfare
Active electronically scanned array radars — the AN/APG-81 of the F-35 and its GaN successors, the SPY-6 of the US Navy, Patriot's LTAMDS, the THAAD and NASAMS batteries deployed across the Gulf and Europe in 2025–26 — are built from thousands of gallium-nitride transmit-receive modules; CSIS puts about 77 kg of gallium in a THAAD battery. GaN also powers the jammers of electronic warfare and the counter-drone radars that proliferated in 2025. Every one of those modules starts as 7N gallium and trimethylgallium, most of which comes from the country the radars are pointed at.
🌙Germanium optics and night vision
Germanium is transparent to long-wave infrared and opaque to visible light: it is the lens, window and dome of thermal-imaging rifle sights, vehicle periscopes, targeting pods, missile seekers and the uncooled thermal cameras now fitted to drones by the hundred thousand. About a quarter of world germanium goes into infrared optics; the US military's share of that is the reason the Defense Logistics Agency keeps germanium in the National Defense Stockpile (about 14,000 kg at the end of 2022) and funded Lattice Materials' optics plant in Montana under the DPA in September 2025.
🛰Space solar and satellite links
The triple-junction solar cells that power most satellites — including reconnaissance, missile-warning and communications constellations — are grown on germanium wafers (5N Plus in Utah and Azur Space in Germany are the Western suppliers), and their radio links run on gallium arsenide amplifiers. A satellite constellation is therefore a germanium customer, and the 2024–26 launch boom one of the drivers behind S&P's 24% "solar and electronics" share.
🇺🇸No primary gallium, a ban and a vault
The United States has not recovered primary gallium since 1987 and imports 100% of it; it imports more than half its germanium and holds no gallium in its stockpile. The 2025–26 response: DPA Title III awards to Lattice Materials ($18.5 million), ElementUSA ($29.9 million, gallium from Atalco's Louisiana alumina), 5N Plus ($18.1 million), Umicore Quapaw ($11.8 million) and ReElement ($25 million); $174 million of Department of War money in Alcoa's Wagerup gallium plant; the $12 billion Project Vault stockpile (2 February 2026); and a Section 232 proclamation (14 January 2026) that chose negotiated price floors and offtakes over tariffs. China's military-end-user ban on the United States — unlike the civilian one — was never suspended.
🇯🇵Japan: cut off, then paying for Australia
Japan, the world's second gallium consumer and home to the recyclers at Dowa, was banned from dual-use Chinese exports on 6 January 2026 after Prime Minister Takaichi's Taiwan remarks; gallium and germanium shipments to Japan were zero in January and February, then a licensed 6 t of gallium arrived in May. Tokyo's answer is to underwrite supply elsewhere: Sojitz and JOGMEC's JAGA joint venture is a partner in Alcoa's 100 t a year Wagerup plant, and Mitsubishi has signed to take ERG's Kazakh gallium from late 2026.
🇪🇺Europe: a refiner, a list and a stockpile
Both metals are strategic raw materials under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act; Umicore's Olen germanium plant is one of the first 60 strategic projects (March 2025), fed from Lubumbashi under a Belgian state guarantee since July 2026; Metlen's gallium plant in Greece — ~€300 million approved in May 2026, €90 million from the European Investment Bank, 50 t a year from 2027 — is the first new primary gallium in Europe since Stade closed in 2016; and gallium is on the shortlist for the EU's first pilot stockpile under RESourceEU, with germanium under consideration. Russia, meanwhile, became the largest buyer of Chinese germanium in 2025.
Sources: USGS MCS 2026 (US production history, import reliance, stockpile); CSIS (THAAD gallium content; US–China truce analysis, 11 May 2026); Payne Institute (North American germanium supply chain, 29 July 2026); US Department of War DPA Title III notices; Alcoa (14 July 2026); White House (Section 232 proclamation, 14 January 2026; Project Vault, 2 February 2026); MOFCOM Announcements 2024 No. 46, 2025 No. 72 and 2026 No. 1; rawmaterials.net (Japan trade data, 2026); European Commission (CRMA strategic projects, 25 March 2025; RESourceEU, 4 December 2025); Mining Weekly (EU stockpile shortlist, 20 May 2026); Metlen; Umicore; Gécamines/STL.
Capital flows
Where the chip-metal money is going
For a decade nobody outside China would build a gallium or germanium plant: a market of a few hundred tonnes, a byproduct economics that needed an alumina or zinc host, and a Chinese price that could halve on command. In 2025–26 the state became the anchor investor — the Pentagon, Canada's growth fund, the European Investment Bank, Japan's JOGMEC — and the Western price did the rest. The constraint is now time and tonnes: everything financed so far adds about 300 t of gallium a year by 2028–30 against Chinese capacity of 1,600 t. Presented as observation, not investment advice.
🇦🇺Alcoa's Wagerup: the first big one
On 14 July 2026 Alcoa took the final investment decision on a gallium plant at its Wagerup alumina refinery in Western Australia — 100 t a year, roughly a tenth of world primary output, from 2027 — with US$174 million from the US Department of War, equity from the Japanese JAGA venture of Sojitz and JOGMEC, and Australian government backing. It is the largest new primary gallium source outside China since the 1980s and the first time three allied governments have co-financed one plant.
🇬🇷Metlen: Europe's return
Metlen Energy & Metals is adding a gallium circuit to its Agios Nikolaos alumina refinery in Viotia, Greece: about €300 million approved by the Greek government as a strategic investment on 15 May 2026, €90 million of it from the European Investment Bank, 50 t a year from 2027 and full output in 2028 — Europe's first primary gallium since Ingal Stade closed in 2016. On 29 July 2026 it signed an offtake with a US buyer; the plant is a candidate CRMA strategic project and a supplier to the EU pilot stockpile.
🇨🇦Teck's Trail and Rio Tinto's Quebec pilot
Canada has the West's only germanium smelter and, from 2027, its first gallium pilot. Teck won C$400 million from the Canada Growth Fund on 7 July 2026 toward a C$850 million programme to double germanium (and antimony) output at Trail and add gallium recovery; Rio Tinto and Indium Corporation began building a 4 t a year gallium pilot plant at the Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Jonquière on 2 March 2026, first metal in 2027, with an option to scale to 40 t. Neo Performance Materials already recycles gallium at Peterborough, Ontario.
🇰🇷Korea Zinc: Clarksville and Onsan
Korea Zinc, the world's largest zinc smelter, is making both metals part of its $7.4 billion "Crucible" smelter project at Clarksville, Tennessee, backed by JPMorgan: about 54 t a year of gallium and 44 t of germanium from 2030, which would make it the largest Western source of both. At home it is adding a 15.5 t a year gallium line at Onsan for trial production in the first half of 2028. ERG's 15 t a year restart at Pavlodar, Kazakhstan — due in the fourth quarter of 2026, with Mitsubishi as offtaker — is the first of the idled plants to come back.
🇺🇸The DPA chain
Five Defense Production Act awards in ten months built a US pipeline from scratch: ElementUSA ($29.9 million) to recover ~50 t a year of gallium from Atalco's Gramercy, Louisiana alumina refinery; ReElement ($25 million) for gallium and germanium refining in Indiana; 5N Plus ($18.1 million) to expand germanium wafers in Utah beyond 20 t a year; Umicore Quapaw ($11.8 million) for germanium tetrachloride in Oklahoma; Lattice Materials ($18.5 million) for infrared optics in Montana. Metallium in Texas and a line of recyclers follow. Project Vault's $12 billion is the demand side.
⚠️The risks
Every one mirrors the upside. China runs 1,600 t of gallium capacity at 900 t and could double exports — or lift the US ban's suspension on 27 November 2026 and keep the Western price at ten times its own; the Chinese domestic 4N price fell to $240 in mid-2023 after the licences and has drifted at $230–290 through 2026. Byproduct plants depend on their alumina host: Wagerup and Viotia produce gallium only while they produce alumina. Germanium's largest new Western source, Big Hill in Lubumbashi, sits in the DRC, which has classed germanium as a strategic substance alongside cobalt since its 2018 Decree 18/042, under the same regulator that halted cobalt exports in 2025; recycling and thrifting respond to $9,000 germanium within a year; and the projects' combined ~300 t of gallium by 2030 is less than the demand growth S&P expects in the same period.
This section describes where capital is flowing, based on public data. It is not financial advice.
Sources: Alcoa (14 July 2026) via Mining Weekly; Metlen (15 May and 29 July 2026); Teck and the Canada Growth Fund (7 July 2026) via CIM Magazine; Rio Tinto and Indium Corporation (2 March 2026) via International Mining; Korea Zinc via Fastmarkets and The Korea Herald; ERG via Project Blue; US Department of War DPA Title III notices (September 2025 – July 2026); Materials Dispatch (non-Chinese supply tracker); SMM (China domestic prices); S&P Global (demand outlook); OECD (2026) on the DRC's strategic-minerals decree.
Company tracker
The companies that move the chip metals
Chinese alumina and zinc groups at the source, a handful of Western refiners and wafer makers in the middle, and a newly state-funded line of developers racing a price Beijing sets. Filter by segment or search.
Company
Segment
Key assets
Status & recent signals
Company status reflects public disclosures as of early October 2026. This is an observational tracker, not investment advice.
Sources: company disclosures & filings; USGS MCS 2026; S&P Global; SMM; trade press (Reuters, Mining Weekly, Fastmarkets, International Mining, CIM Magazine, The Korea Herald, Project Blue, Materials Dispatch).
Data & methodology
Open data sources
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 — Gallium and Germanium (with the 2024 and 2025 editions) — world primary gallium production and capacity by country, US salient statistics (imports, unit values, tariffs, net import reliance, stockpile), Chinese germanium export volumes and destinations, Europe germanium price averages (Argus), end uses, substitutes and the events narrative.
Prices — Argus via USGS (Europe germanium metal and dioxide annual averages; US import unit values), Fastmarkets (Rotterdam gallium and germanium assessments, control analysis), SMM (Chinese domestic 4N gallium and 5N germanium, Western warehouse quotations), Strategic Metals Invest (Western retail-scale 4N gallium and 5N germanium quotations), CSIS (Western gallium record, April 2026), S&P Global reference prices (August 2026). Neither metal has an exchange contract; all prices are agency assessments of a thin trade and the extremes quoted are approximate.
Policy — Chinese Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs Announcement 2023 No. 23 (3 July 2023), 2024 No. 46 (3 December 2024), 2025 No. 72 (9 November 2025) and 2026 No. 1 (6 January 2026); White House Section 232 proclamation of 14 January 2026 (via Covington) and Project Vault (2 February 2026); USTR statement (7 August 2026); US Department of War Defense Production Act Title III notices; Payne Institute (North American germanium chain, 29 July 2026); EU Critical Raw Materials Act strategic projects (25 March 2025), RESourceEU (4 December 2025) and the pilot-stockpile shortlist via Mining Weekly (20 May 2026).
Trade flows — Chinese customs data via USGS, rawmaterials.net, Tradium and SMM (monthly gallium and germanium exports by destination, 2023–2026); US import statistics via USGS; UN Comtrade.
Notes — plant coordinates are approximate; Chinese alumina provinces and Inner Mongolia's coal-germanium plants are mapped at plant or district level. Gallium production is tonnes of low-purity (4N) primary metal; germanium figures mix primary and refined output because no single series separates them — S&P's ~91% (primary) and the industry's ~63% (refined, 2024) are both shown and labelled. Full-year 2025 Chinese gallium exports are disputed between sources and are not charted. Western "retail" quotations (Strategic Metals Invest) run above wholesale assessments (Fastmarkets, SMM warehouse) and are labelled as such. Last data refresh: 8 October 2026. Header photo: pending — a Wikimedia Commons image of an alumina refinery or a gallium crystal will be credited here when added.
FAQ
Common questions
What are gallium and germanium used for?
For the parts of electronics that silicon cannot do. Gallium goes into compound semiconductors — gallium arsenide for the radio-frequency chips in every phone and satellite link, gallium nitride for 5G base stations, AESA radars, fast chargers and the power electronics of electric cars and AI data centres, and the LEDs that lit the world after the 2014 Nobel-winning blue GaN diode; S&P Global puts semiconductors at about 61% of 2025 demand, and a surprising 36% goes into neodymium-iron-boron magnets, where a little gallium improves heat resistance. Germanium is the dopant in the core of almost every optical fibre (about 40% of demand), the lens and window material of thermal-imaging and night-vision optics (25%), the wafer under the multi-junction solar cells that power most satellites, and a catalyst for PET plastic. Both are byproducts: gallium of refining bauxite into alumina, germanium of smelting zinc and, in China, of burning germanium-rich coal.
Which country produces the most gallium and germanium?
China, by a margin that has no equal among the critical minerals. USGS estimates world primary gallium production at about 900 tonnes in 2025, of which China made 900 — 99% — with Russia (6 t) and Japan (3 t) the only other producers and the plants of Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Korea and Ukraine idle. China's capacity is about 1,600 of the world's 1,700 tonnes, so it runs at little more than half. For germanium USGS publishes no world total; S&P Global attributes about 91% of production to China, while industry counts that include Western refiners put 2024 output near 230 tonnes with China at 145 (63%), Belgium's Umicore and Canada's Teck at 12–15 each, Russia 10–15, the United States 7–9. BGS records China at 200 tonnes in 2024. The difference is where you count: at the furnace, China dominates almost totally; at the refinery, Olen and Trail still matter.
What did China's gallium and germanium export controls do?
They were the first shot in the critical-minerals trade war, and the model for everything since. On 3 July 2023 the Ministry of Commerce and customs administration put gallium and germanium items — metal, oxides, arsenide, nitride, trichloride and more — under export licensing from 1 August 2023, days after the Netherlands and Japan tightened chip-tool exports. Exports stopped for two months, then resumed to licensed buyers: 2024 gallium exports actually rose 55% to 69 tonnes while germanium fell 30% to 29 tonnes. On 3 December 2024, the day after new US chip sanctions, Beijing banned exports of gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials to the United States outright and prohibited dual-use sales to US military end users; Chinese germanium-metal exports to all buyers fell from 36.7 tonnes in January–September 2023 to 7.5 tonnes in the same months of 2025, and a single 3 kg gallium shipment reached the United States in all of 2025. On 9 November 2025, after the Trump–Xi meeting in Busan, China suspended the US ban until 27 November 2026 — the licensing regime and the military-end-user ban stayed — and on 6 January 2026 it added a ban on dual-use exports to Japanese military end users. Monthly shipments in 2026 have swung between near zero and a few tonnes, licence by licence.
What happens on 27 November 2026?
China's suspension of its December 2024 ban on gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard-material exports to the United States expires. Announcement 2025 No. 72 of 9 November 2025 suspended article 2 of the ban for one year as part of the Busan truce; as of early October 2026 no extension has been announced, and Beijing has tied the post-November terms to the state of trade consultations. Even while suspended, the ban made little practical difference: every export still needs a licence, dual-use sales to US military end users remain prohibited, US gallium-metal imports in 2025 came from Japan, Germany and Canada rather than China, and Western prices have kept rising. What the date decides is whether a US civilian buyer can legally receive Chinese gallium at all in 2027 — and whether the price gap between a Chinese domestic kilo and a Rotterdam kilo, already five- to tenfold, gets wider.
Why are gallium and germanium so much more expensive outside China?
Because the controls split one market into two. Inside China gallium is abundant — capacity of 1,600 tonnes against 900 of output — and the domestic 4N price has drifted between about $230 and $290 a kilo through 2026 (SMM). Outside China every kilo needs a licence, and the Western spot price went from roughly $600 in January 2025 to a record near $1,850 in April 2026 (CSIS) and above $2,800 by October (Strategic Metals Invest) — the IEA puts the European price at about five times the Chinese one. Germanium went the same way: the European annual average (Argus via USGS) rose from $1,392 a kilo in 2023 to $1,991 in 2024 and about $4,100 in 2025, Rotterdam metal traded at $8,000–10,000 in April 2026 (Fastmarkets), and in October 2026 a Chinese 5N ingot cost about $3,600 against $6,400–9,900 in Western warehouses. Neither metal has an exchange contract; every price is an assessment of a thin trade, which is why the USTR welcomed S&P Global's new reference prices in August 2026 and why Western projects are being financed on a price China could undercut tomorrow.
Why do militaries care about gallium and germanium?
Because they are the materials of seeing and sensing: gallium nitride is the transmit-receive module of every modern AESA radar and electronic-warfare jammer — CSIS counts about 77 kg of gallium per THAAD battery — and gallium arsenide the amplifier of military satellite links and guided weapons; germanium is the lens, window and dome of thermal-imaging and night-vision sights, missile seekers and targeting pods, and the wafer under the triple-junction solar cells of reconnaissance and communications satellites. The United States has not produced primary gallium since 1987, imports 100% of what it uses, and more than half its germanium; the Defense Logistics Agency held about 14,000 kg of germanium metal at the end of 2022 and no gallium at all. The response since 2025: Defense Production Act awards to Lattice Materials ($18.5 million), ElementUSA ($29.9 million), 5N Plus ($18.1 million), Umicore's Oklahoma plant ($11.8 million) and ReElement ($25 million), $174 million of Department of War money for Alcoa's gallium plant in Western Australia, the $12 billion 'Project Vault' stockpile announced in February 2026, and a Section 232 proclamation in January 2026 that chose price floors and offtakes over tariffs. The EU lists both as strategic raw materials and has shortlisted gallium for its first pilot stockpile; Japan, cut off in January 2026, is paying for Alcoa's plant through Sojitz and JOGMEC.
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