Executive summary

Chapter 1. Introduction

• Critical materials, such as cobalt, rare earth metals or lithium, are causing geopolitical tensions worldwide: in the EU and from China to Ukraine and from Greenland to Congo.
• By definition, critical materials are of great economic importance and carry a high risk of supply disruption. They are also often difficult to replace with other materials. For Europe, critical materials are also often strategically important for the green and digital transitions, our security (defence) and health (care).
• Sustainability also plays an important role. On the one hand, critical materials are needed for the energy transition – for solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars, among other things – and are therefore necessary for achieving climate goals. On the other hand, large-scale mining often causes damage to ecosystems, the environment or people. This jeopardises other sustainability goals. Circularity – reducing consumption, reuse, recycling and the recovery of raw materials – is therefore essential.

Chapter 2. The Netherlands in the EU

• In 2024, the Netherlands imported 22.3 billion euros worth of critical materials. A large share is re-exported to the rest of Europe thanks to the Netherlands' role as a distribution hub.
• Given that the vast majority of critical materials are extracted and processed outside the EU, it is relevant to look at EU countries' imports from non-EU countries. We then see that in 2024, the Netherlands was the largest importer of critical materials in the EU: 17.2 billion euros in terms of import value from non-EU countries and 18.5 billion kg in terms of import volume. Including intra-EU trade, the Netherlands ranks third by value and second by volume.

Chapter 3. Historical trends in Dutch imports

• Prices are a major factor in Dutch import values of critical materials. Due to lower prices, the value of imports in 2024 was 7 percent lower than in 2023 and 29 percent lower than in 2022. The import volume has decreased by only 7 percent since 2022. Since 2002, the import value has more than tripled, while the volume of these imports has only increased by 39 percent.
• Aluminium, coking coal, copper and nickel together accounted for more than three-quarters of the total Dutch import value of critical materials in 2024. In terms of volume, aluminium and coking coal alone accounted for a similar share. Other materials have relatively small volumes.

Chapter 4. Countries of consignment

• Including quasi-transit (the transit through the Netherlands of goods owned by foreign parties) and measured by value, Norway was the most important supplier of critical materials to the Netherlands in 2024, followed by Iceland. In both cases, this mainly concerned aluminium. However, excluding quasi-transit, Germany was the largest supplier, followed by Norway and Iceland.
• In terms of import volume, Australia and the US are the largest suppliers of critical materials to the Netherlands, primarily due to the import of enormous quantities of coking coal into our country.
• For a quarter of the materials, China is the largest supplier. The Netherlands imports a large share from non-EU countries, often concentrated in a few countries. This raises supply risks, especially for barite, bismuth, magnesium (particularly from China), coking coal (Australia, US), helium (Qatar), lithium (Chile), niobium (Brazil), feldspar (Norway, Turkey) and borate (Turkey).

Chapter 5. Products containing critical materials

• The Netherlands is not only a major importer of critical materials, but also of products containing critical materials. A larger share of imports of products containing critical materials is destined for the Dutch market than we saw earlier with the materials themselves.
• Because the total product value is taken into account, the amounts involved here are much larger than we saw earlier for imports of critical materials themselves. In 2024, the Netherlands imported the largest amount of products containing critical materials from China. This amounted to a value of 58.4 billion euros. Almost half of this was foreign-owned transit trade (quasi-transit). Excluding quasi-transit, Germany was the largest supplier. Further research is needed to clarify what proportion of imports from Germany originated in China.
• Main imported products containing critical materials, in terms of import value, were: computer parts, telephones and routers, laptops and tablets, pharmaceuticals, parts for specialised machines (such as chip machines), pharmaceutical products, medical instruments and solar panels.
• Aluminium, copper and rare earth metals were most often imported as part of semi-finished or finished products. Coking coal, previously mentioned prominently as an imported raw material, is hardly ever imported as part of another product.

Chapter 6. Destination of Dutch imports of critical materials

• On an economic ownership basis, the Netherlands imported 12.8 billion euros worth of critical materials in 2023. Of this, 57.8 percent was destined directly for other countries (re-exports), an increase compared to 2021 (51.5 percent).
• Of the critical materials imported, 41.1 percent was processed by companies in the Netherlands. This represented 2.3 percent of the total amount of all processed imports in the Netherlands. More than half of the processed materials were ultimately exported; the rest went to the domestic market. The manufacturing sector was the largest processor of imported critical materials (61 percent), followed by construction (21 percent).
• Critical materials for intermediate use came more often from EU countries: 43.5 percent of imports, compared to 34.4 percent of total imports. For re-exports, the EU share was smaller (27 percent).
• In 2023, Germany was the largest supplier of critical materials for further processing (945 million euros), followed by Belgium and Iceland. Imports from the EU and the US were mostly processed in the Netherlands, while imports from China and Norway were mainly re-exported.

Chapter 7. Dependencies in the Dutch supply chain

• In 2019, the Netherlands indirectly imported – via other countries as intermediaries – almost twice as many critical materials as it did directly. Nevertheless, direct imports are growing faster, especially in fabrication: up almost 29 percent between 2015 and 2019. This mainly concerned a significantly higher use of metals such as aluminium, copper, nickel and tungsten. This suggests a possible change in the role of the Netherlands: instead of importing raw materials or end products, Dutch manufacturers are increasingly importing semi-finished products containing critical materials for further processing and assembly.
• The extraction stage of the supply chain appears to be the most vulnerable. At the overall level, this stage scores “high” on our vulnerability scale, with no less than 99 percent of the import value coming from supply chains that depend on non-EU countries. Most materials studied showed high or very high risk. This includes raw materials that are crucial to the energy transition and digital economy, such as copper, nickel, manganese and borates, most of which are extracted outside the EU's sphere of influence.
• The processing and refining stage of the supply chain appears less vulnerable, with a “low” average vulnerability score. This is due to large volumes of certain materials with reasonably diversified supply chain, such as aluminium and copper. However, this masks significant risks for technologically critical materials with a lower import value. For the semiconductor industry (including silicon, gallium, rare earth metals) and the defence industry (including cobalt, beryllium), the Dutch and European economies are highly dependent on non-EU countries for processing. This can pose risks in the value chain.
• Four materials not (yet) on the official CRMA list – molybdenum, tin, silver and zirconium – also show “high” vulnerability. This is driven by very large and concentrated direct imports, making the largest importers of the four materials – the Dutch base metal industry and chemical industry – sensitive to supply disruptions. For example, 95 percent of imports of molybdenum for domestic use depend on the US. This illustrates how dependence on a single country or a small group of countries can pose a direct risk, even if supply is sufficient globally.

Chapter 8. The origin of metals for Dutch consumption

• The metal raw material footprint of Dutch consumption was higher in 2021 than in earlier years. Per capita use of metals in the Netherlands is high compared with other EU countries. Two-thirds of this footprint consisted of copper and iron.
• Most metals came from China, accounting for almost 14 percent of the metal footprint of Dutch consumption. The second largest supplier is Chile, accounting for 10 percent, mainly copper. Brazil ranks third, also accounting for 10 percent, mainly aluminium and iron.
• In processing for Dutch consumption, the basic metal industry uses more energy and water than mining. Metal industries accounted for 14 percent of the energy footprint and 3 percent of the water footprint of Dutch consumption.

Chapter 9. Findings at material level

• Critical materials differ strongly in value. For example, the cheapest material (bauxite, priced at 3 US cents per kg) is more than 5 million times cheaper than the most expensive material (iridium, priced at 154,000 US dollars per kg).
• In global rankings of production, reserves and processing of critical materials, China is even more dominant than we saw earlier with Dutch imports. Out of 75 rankings, China ranks first in 39. The US and South Africa rank first only five times each. Russia ranks in the top three for 25 materials.
• Supply is highly concentrated for gallium and germanium (processing in China) and platinum group metals (mining mainly in South Africa). For 16 critical materials, the EU is almost entirely dependent on imports.
• Recycling will become increasingly important in the coming years: from a sustainability point of view, but also to reduce dependence on imports. According to the most recent EU figures (JRC, 2023), more than a quarter of four materials consisted of recycled material. These are tungsten (42 percent), copper (30 percent), platinum group metals (30 percent) and antimony (28 percent).