| ISSUE 028 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| The October 2025 contract announcement gave the National Defense Stockpile’s niobium purchase in dollars. The solicitation behind it also gave it in pounds: 380,360 pounds of niobium metal ingot over five years, to ASTM B391 designation R04200, per Defense Logistics Agency solicitation SP8000-25-R-0014, issued in August 2025. | |
| Niobium metal is the smaller of the two main streams the country imports. Of US niobium material imports from 2021 to 2024, measured by niobium content, 68 percent was ferroniobium, 22 percent was niobium metal, and the remainder was niobium oxide and ores and concentrates, per the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, published in February 2026. The same report puts about 23 percent of US niobium consumption into superalloys, and says the aerospace industry consumed niobium as alloys and metal while the steel industry consumed it mostly as ferroniobium. | |
| Net import reliance for all niobium materials, measured by niobium content, was 100 percent of apparent consumption in every year from 2021 through 2025, per the same report. USGS adds that niobium was recycled inside niobium-bearing steels and superalloys rather than recovered on its own, and that scrap recovery specifically for niobium content was negligible. The amount recycled that way was not available, and may have equaled as much as 20 percent of apparent consumption. | |
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| PLATE · Euxenite placer dredge, Bear Valley, Idaho, 1950s |
| In the 1950s Washington bought niobium under its older name, columbium. In 1953 the federal purchase program for domestic columbium-tantalum ores was extended to December 31, 1958. The program for foreign and domestic ores combined could end sooner once the government had bought 15 million pounds of contained columbium and tantalum pentoxides, per the Bureau of Mines Minerals Yearbook for 1953. |
| The Bureau’s Minerals Yearbook for 1955 credited the high prices paid under the program since 1951 with the discovery of extensive new columbium and tantalum resources, all of them in foreign countries. It found the program less successful at home, where no major commercial source was found, and listed one euxenite placer deposit developed in Idaho. |
| In 1959 Porter Bros. Corp. was still shipping euxenite concentrate from its dredge in Bear Valley, Idaho, at a reduced rate, per the Minerals Yearbook for 1959. Its federal contract called for 1,050,000 pounds of combined columbium and tantalum pentoxides by June 1961; the Bureau reported deliveries far ahead of schedule and expected completion early in 1960. USGS has reported no significant US niobium mine production since 1959. |
| PLATE · Global Advanced Metals niobium and tantalum facility, Boyertown, Pennsylvania | |||
| The stockpile ingots are made in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, at the Global Advanced Metals facility, which the company identifies as the only fully integrated producer of tantalum and niobium in the United States. DLA Strategic Materials awarded GAM an indefinite-delivery contract for up to $50 million of niobium ingots over five years, to be produced and shipped from Boyertown, per a company announcement on October 6, 2025. | |||
| On August 7, 2026, the Export-Import Bank of the United States announced it would direct $25 million to Global Advanced Metals in Pennsylvania for tantalum and niobium, per an EXIM release that day. The US Environmental Protection Agency describes the Boyertown facility as making tantalum and niobium metals by processing raw ore, and records that it began operations in 1950. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
