| ISSUE 020 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| The minerals ledger everyone reads is a list of Chinese chokepoints. Beryllium sits on the other side of it. The United States mines most of the world’s supply, from one county in Utah, through one company. | |
| Three quarters of world beryllium consumption goes into copper alloys, mostly strip for connectors, contacts and switches, according to the USGS 2019 yearbook. By sales revenue, the USGS put 29 percent of US beryllium products into consumer electronics in 2025 and 24 percent into aerospace and defence. The pure metal went into the 18 primary mirror segments of the Webb telescope and, by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s 2013 account, into infrared targeting systems on fighters and attack helicopters. | |
| The USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries of February 2026 put US mine output at 230 tonnes of contained beryllium in 2025, out of a world total of 430. By the USGS 2019 yearbook, only three countries process the ore into products: the United States, China and Kazakhstan. The same 2026 summary estimates the import price of beryllium-copper master alloy at $1,600 per kilogram of contained beryllium in 2025, against $660 in 2022. | |
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| PLATE · HAND-COBBED BERYL, BLACK HILLS PEGMATITES, 1952 – 1962 |
| In October 1952, two years into the Korean War buildup, the federal government began buying domestic beryl at premium prices for the national stockpile. Bureau of Mines Information Circular 8298 records that the program ran until 30 June 1962. |
| The ore came out of Black Hills pegmatites by hand. For 1960 the Bureau of Mines counted beryl from 71 mines in Custer and Pennington counties, South Dakota, most of it sold to the General Services Administration purchase depot at Custer for the stockpile. Output per mine ranged from a few pounds to a few tens of tons. A flotation mill at Keystone, built to a Bureau of Mines process, made trial runs that year and reported no production. |
| A premium price bought what hand sorting could find, for as long as the program paid. Today’s American supply rests on a different mineral: bertrandite, mined from open pits in Juab County, Utah, at about 0.13 percent beryllium, according to Materion's 2021 technical report to the SEC. The USGS now finds very little American beryl that can be economically hand sorted. |
| PLATE · PRIMARY BERYLLIUM REDUCTION, ELMORE, OHIO | |||
| Materion’s plant at Elmore, Ohio, stopped reducing primary beryllium in 2000. The Air Force Research Laboratory gave the reasons in 2013: obsolete equipment, environmental concerns, metal available from the National Defense Stockpile, and softening demand. The company’s filings state that from 2000 all its metallic beryllium came from the stockpile and from foreign vendors. | |||
| Defense Production Act Title III money rebuilt the step. Materion’s 2010 annual report put the cost at about $93.6 million, with the Pentagon reimbursing all but $23.2 million. The new line, called the Pebbles Plant after the shape of its metal, demonstrated 160,000 pounds a year of high-purity beryllium, with output primarily allocated to defence and government uses, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory. | |||
| Major construction ended with a ribbon cutting in May 2010. The building stands 73 feet tall on a 51,045 square foot footprint, over three levels. | |||
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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. |
