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Critical minerals hiding in zinc ore
Germanium, gallium and indium are in almost every phone, data centre and radar system built today. Almost none of it is mined on purpose. These metals are recovered as by-products of zinc, and only from ore that happens to carry enough of them.
The pages below list the deposits where measurements exist, drawn from 13,104 individual analyses of sphalerite across 531 deposits in 35 countries.
Germanium (Ge)
265 of 439 tested deposits carry a measurable value. Highest: Nanmushu, China.
Gallium (Ga)
357 of 475 tested deposits carry a measurable value. Highest: Fankou, China.
Indium (In)
325 of 452 tested deposits carry a measurable value. Highest: Huari Huari, Bolivia.
How to read these numbers
Every concentration is measured inside sphalerite, the zinc sulphide mineral, not across the whole rock. They show by-product potential and are not deposit grades or resources. A deposit whose sphalerite carries 300 ppm germanium is not a 300 ppm germanium deposit, because only part of the rock is sphalerite.
Maximum and median are both shown. A single high reading is one mineral grain, not a deposit.
Source: Critical Minerals in Ores mineral chemistry database (CMiO-MIN), Geoscience Australia, Geological Survey of Canada and U.S. Geological Survey. Licensed CC-BY 4.0.
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