Five items this week. China controls 57 per cent of global indium production, and export controls imposed in 2023 link display and thin-film solar supply to the same regulatory chokepoint as gallium and germanium. China supplies 80 per cent of battery-grade graphite, a concentration whose demand is forecast to double by 2040 with no credible non-Chinese supply base capable of absorbing that growth. Swiss Re’s sigma series shows insured natural catastrophe losses exceeding USD 120 billion for a fifth consecutive year in 2025, a structural shift in physical asset risk that insurance pricing alone cannot resolve. Battery storage additions reached 110 gigawatts in 2025, the most of any power technology globally. And China produces approximately 65 per cent of global vanadium as vanadium redox flow batteries expand their share of grid-scale storage deployments.
- China controlled approximately 57 per cent of global indium mine production in 2024, according to USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, and export controls imposed in August 2023 continue to apply to indium exports alongside the better-publicised restrictions on gallium and germanium.
Indium is used principally in indium tin oxide (ITO), the transparent conductive coating used in LCD and OLED displays, touchscreens, and thin-film photovoltaic cells. Global production reached approximately 1,000 tonnes in 2024, with China the dominant producer followed by South Korea. No practical substitute exists for ITO at production scale, and the indium content in consumer electronics and solar panels is not recoverable through standard recycling processes. The USGS identifies indium as critical to US national security.
Why it matters: Export controls on indium receive less attention than those on gallium and germanium, but the material is embedded in every liquid crystal display, every smartphone touchscreen, and an expanding share of thin-film solar cells. A supply interruption affects display manufacturing and the solar supply chain simultaneously. Any buyer of consumer electronics or home solar hardware is exposed to a concentrated Chinese supply chokepoint that policy has not yet resolved.
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Indium – US Geological Survey
- China supplies approximately 80 per cent of the world’s battery-grade graphite and that share is projected to hold through 2035, according to the IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025, making graphite anode material the most geographically concentrated input in the global battery supply chain.
Every lithium-ion battery contains graphite in its anode. The IEA’s vulnerability analysis finds that if China’s production were excluded, non-Chinese graphite sources could cover only 35 to 40 per cent of global demand. The concentration is worsening: the combined market share of the top three refining nations rose from 82 per cent in 2020 to 86 per cent in 2024, with almost all supply growth coming from a single country. Demand for graphite is expected to double by 2040 under current policy trajectories, with battery applications driving the bulk of that growth.
Why it matters: Rare earth elements attracted policy attention because of a single supply disruption in 2010. Graphite has the same single-country concentration and the same embedded demand curve, growing strongly over the next fifteen years. It is materially underpriced as a supply risk in most investment frameworks, in the same way copper was underpriced before the data-centre buildout became legible. For that parallel, see Why Copper Is the Quiet Protagonist of the AI Boom.
Source: IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 – IEA
- Global insured losses from natural catastrophes exceeded USD 120 billion for the fifth consecutive year in 2025, according to Swiss Re Institute’s sigma series, with the average of the past five years running approximately 40 per cent above the inflation-adjusted average of the preceding decade.
The elevated run rate reflects a combination of rising asset values in exposed geographies, expanding urbanisation in flood and wildfire risk zones, and climatological shifts that are increasing the frequency of secondary perils including flooding, hail, and wildfires. Swiss Re sigma has tracked this trend since 1970, and the step-change in insured loss volume since 2017 is documented across both primary and secondary peril categories. The uninsured component of total losses substantially exceeds the insured figure, meaning public balance sheets and households without coverage absorb the difference.
Why it matters: Physical assets in exposed locations carry a risk that insurance is repricing upward every year. The relevant observation for buyers of real assets is that location matters more than it did a decade ago, and that the cost of physical resilience, hardened structures, water independence, off-grid power, is being validated by reinsurance market data, not by speculation. The Swiss Re sigma trend is among the clearest primary measures of how the physical risk environment is shifting.
Source: Swiss Re Institute: sigma Natural Catastrophes 2025 – Swiss Re Institute
- Global battery storage capacity additions reached nearly 110 gigawatts in 2025, a 40 per cent increase on the previous year according to the IEA’s Global Energy Review 2026, the first time battery storage has outpaced every other power technology in annual additions globally.
The figure exceeds the highest-ever annual natural gas capacity additions. Solar photovoltaic additions reached 600 gigawatts in the same year, the largest absolute electricity generation increase from any single technology in a single year outside post-crisis recovery periods. The combined buildout is compressing the timeline in which mineral supply chains, for lithium, graphite, manganese, and nickel, need to scale to meet structurally higher demand.
Why it matters: The energy transition’s draw on finite mineral inputs is accelerating faster than most supply-chain models assumed. For anyone considering home-scale battery storage, the planning horizon is shortening on both ends: the mineral inputs that determine long-run price are tightening, and delays compound cost. Our guide to home battery systems covers the current buying options.
Source: IEA Global Energy Review 2026 – IEA
- China produces approximately 65 per cent of global vanadium output, according to USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, while vanadium redox flow batteries have become the fastest-growing grid-scale storage chemistry in long-duration applications.
Global vanadium mine production reached approximately 90,000 tonnes in 2024, with China the dominant producer followed by Russia and South Africa. Vanadium is used in high-strength low-alloy steel, which accounts for around 90 per cent of current demand in construction and automotive, and increasingly in vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) for grid-scale energy storage. VRFBs have no capacity degradation over thousands of cycles, making them well suited to eight-to-twelve-hour storage applications where lithium-ion degradation becomes prohibitive. The growth in long-duration storage deployments is creating a new demand vector in a commodity where supply concentration closely mirrors the pattern seen in rare earths.
Why it matters: Grid-scale storage durations are extending as electricity markets move beyond peak-shaving into multi-hour balancing. Vanadium redox flow technology is emerging as the preferred chemistry for the longer end of that spectrum. A supply picture dominated by China at 65 per cent of production creates the same structural vulnerability the rare earth and gallium stories document, in a market that has not yet priced the concentration fully.
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Vanadium – US Geological Survey