Where does chromium come from?

In 2025 South Africa mined 23 million tonnes of chromite ore, 45% of the world's 51 million tonnes (USGS MCS). Turkey (Türkiye) followed with 18%, then Kazakhstan (14%), India (5.9%) and Brazil (3.9%). The top five account for 86%. Reserves are extremely concentrated: South Africa holds 39% of the world's 901.4 million tonnes of chromite ore (USGS MCS).

The Bushveld Complex in South Africa contains chromitite layers, most importantly the Lower Group 6 and Middle Group seams, that can be followed laterally for tens of kilometers, and they hold the great majority of world chromite reserves. Kazakhstan's Kempirsai deposit is smaller but exceptionally high grade. Turkey, India, Finland and Zimbabwe supply the rest, with Turkish and Indian ore feeding both domestic and Chinese smelters.

Everything about chromium comes back to one product. Around nine-tenths of chromite is used to make ferrochrome, and essentially all ferrochrome is used to make stainless steel, which is defined as steel containing at least about eleven percent chromium. That chromium forms a self-repairing oxide film on the surface, and that film is the whole reason stainless steel does not rust. There is no substitute for chromium in that role at any price.

Production is measured here as chromite ore tonnage rather than contained chromium, following the source. Ore grades vary, and the chromium-to-iron ratio matters as much as the chromium percentage for smelting economics.

South Africa was the largest exporter of chromium ore (HS 2610) in 2024 with 85% of world export value, ahead of Turkey (Türkiye) (4.9%), on world trade of $8.4 billion (CEPII BACI). China was the largest importer with 65%.

That table is ore, and it shows the central tension in the industry. South Africa mines most of the world's chromite and exports a large share of it as raw ore to China, which smelts it into ferrochrome and makes stainless steel. South Africa has the ore and the smelting tradition but not, reliably, the electricity; China has the power, the furnaces and the stainless mills. Successive South African governments have considered export taxes or restrictions on raw chromite to force domestic smelting, and the debate turns entirely on whether the electricity to run those furnaces exists.

This page quotes no chromium price, because no free public series exists. Ferrochrome has historically been settled on a quarterly European benchmark negotiated between the largest South African producer and the main stainless mills, with spot assessments for South African and Chinese material published by private price reporting agencies. Chromite ore is assessed separately, delivered to Chinese ports, again privately. There is no exchange contract of any consequence.

The pricing logic is worth understanding even without a number. A ferrochrome smelter buys ore, coke or coal as a reductant, and a very large quantity of electricity, and sells alloy. Because power can be forty percent or more of conversion cost, the ferrochrome price effectively embeds an electricity price, and the geography of smelting has followed cheap power from South Africa toward China and Indonesia over two decades.

Stainless steel mills, the only real customers, buy on an alloy surcharge model: the price of a stainless coil is a base price plus a surcharge reflecting the cost of chromium, nickel and molybdenum in the grade. That mechanism passes raw material cost straight through to the buyer, which is why stainless demand is less price-sensitive to chromium than it might appear and why the ferrochrome market is driven by stainless volume rather than by stainless price.

Essentially all chromium demand is stainless steel demand, and Chinese and Indonesian mills dominate world output. Stainless production volumes, driven by construction, appliances, process industry and transport, therefore set chromium demand directly, and there is no substitution to soften the link.

Ferrochrome smelting is among the most power-intensive metallurgical processes in use. South African load shedding has repeatedly forced smelters to run below capacity or close, while cheap Indonesian and Chinese power has attracted new furnaces. The map of smelting is essentially a map of electricity tariffs.

Periodic proposals to tax or restrict raw chromite exports, intended to force domestic beneficiation, hang over the market. Because South Africa supplies so much of the ore that Chinese smelters use, even the prospect of restriction moves buying behaviour and inventories.

Smelters value ore for its chromium content relative to iron, not just its chromium percentage, because iron dilutes the alloy. High-ratio Kazakh ore therefore commands a premium over lower-ratio South African material, and the discount between them widens when smelter margins are thin.

Chromite inventories at Chinese ports are large relative to monthly smelting demand and act as the market's shock absorber. A build-up during a smelter margin squeeze depresses ore prices for months even when mine output is unchanged.

Austenitic stainless grades contain both chromium and nickel, and when nickel becomes very expensive mills shift toward ferritic and 200-series grades that use less nickel and, in some cases, more chromium or manganese. That substitution changes chromium demand without any change in total stainless output.

Chromite is mined by underground and open-pit methods from the seams of the Bushveld and from ophiolite bodies elsewhere. The ore is crushed and concentrated by gravity separation, since chromite is denser than the surrounding silicates, producing a concentrate that is sold as lumpy ore, chips or fines. Fine concentrate must be agglomerated into pellets or briquettes before it can be smelted efficiently.

Smelting takes place in submerged arc furnaces, where chromite, a carbon reductant and a flux are heated by electricity until the chromium and iron oxides are reduced to a molten ferrochrome alloy. High-carbon ferrochrome, the bulk product, contains several percent carbon. Charge chrome, a slightly lower-grade variant, is what most stainless mills actually buy. Low-carbon and medium-carbon grades require further refining and are used for specialty steels.

At the stainless mill, ferrochrome is melted with scrap and other alloying elements in an electric arc furnace and refined, usually by argon-oxygen decarburisation, which removes carbon without oxidising the valuable chromium. The finished steel is cast, hot rolled, annealed, pickled and cold rolled.

A separate and much smaller chemical chain converts chromite into sodium dichromate and then into chromic acid, chrome plating chemicals and leather tanning agents. This chain is tightly regulated because hexavalent chromium compounds are toxic and carcinogenic, and controls on their use have grown steadily stricter.

Stainless steel is the use, at roughly nine-tenths of demand. Chromium above about eleven percent creates a passive oxide layer that reforms when scratched, giving corrosion resistance that carbon steel cannot approach. Stainless goes into kitchen equipment and appliances, architectural cladding, chemical and food processing plant, oil and gas equipment, medical instruments, cutlery and transport.

Alloy and tool steels use chromium in smaller percentages for hardenability and wear resistance, and superalloys for turbines rely on it for high-temperature oxidation resistance. Chrome plating gives a hard, bright, corrosion-resistant surface on everything from taps to hydraulic rams.

Refractories made from chromite withstand slag attack in furnace linings, though this use has declined on health grounds. Foundry sands use chromite for its thermal properties. Chrome chemicals tan leather, pigment paints and treat timber, though hexavalent chromium restrictions have reduced several of these markets. Nothing in this list rivals stainless steel in volume.

The chain is ore, ferrochrome, stainless steel, and it is stretched across continents in a way that is entirely explained by electricity. South Africa holds the ore and has smelters that increasingly cannot get reliable power; China has furnaces and mills and buys the ore; Indonesia has built stainless capacity next to cheap captive coal power and now smelts both nickel and chromium. Every question about chromium supply security eventually becomes a question about where cheap, reliable electricity is available.

Physically, moving chromite is unremarkable bulk shipping from Richards Bay and Durban, from Kazakh rail links, and from Turkish and Indian ports. The chokepoints are the same South African rail and port constraints described on the manganese page, since the two minerals compete for the same corridors.

The concentration risk is real but differently shaped from most critical minerals. Reserves are overwhelmingly in one country and processing is overwhelmingly in another, so a disruption at either end matters, and the two are linked by a single long shipping route. Unlike lithium or graphite, though, there is no meaningful recycling gap: stainless steel is one of the most recycled materials in the world, and scrap supplies a large share of chromium units in mature markets, which cushions the primary chain considerably.

The genuine long-term constraint is South African electricity. If it improves, more smelting happens at the ore; if it does not, ore keeps travelling and the value stays where the power is.