Gallium and Germanium: Metals Without Mines

Gallium and germanium do not have mines. Neither is dug up on its own. Each is recovered at trace concentration from ore that was processed for something else: gallium from bauxite that was refined into alumina for aluminium, germanium from zinc ore. Yet both sit underneath almost every RF amplifier, 5G base station and fiber-optic link in electronics. That combination, no mine of their own and outsized strategic weight, is what makes them one of the cleanest examples of a supply chokepoint I know.

In this piece I want to explain where they come from, why refining and not mining is the point of leverage, how China's export licensing has escalated since 2023, and what all of it means for India, which imports effectively all of its electronic-grade supply. The facts come from the critical minerals and supply-chain risk chapters in my ESDM research book, and I keep its hedges. Several figures come as ranges because the underlying sources disagree, and I will show those ranges instead of picking a favourite.

Two byproducts with big jobs

Gallium is recovered as a trace byproduct of the Bayer process, the alkaline route that converts bauxite into alumina, at concentrations on the order of 0.005% within the process stream. That trace stream is then refined by zone refining and fractional distillation. Commercial-grade gallium at 4N (99.99%) is adequate for LED lighting and solar alloys. Semiconductor-grade gallium at 6N to 7N is mandatory for growing gallium arsenide and gallium nitride epitaxial wafers, where a single part-per-billion iron impurity can cause electrical leakage in an RF power amplifier. Global annual gallium production is estimated at roughly 550 to 650 metric tons.

GaAs underpins RF power amplifiers, optoelectronics and LEDs. GaN underpins high-frequency RF front ends, 5G base-station amplifiers, EV onboard chargers and fast-charging adapters.

Germanium is likewise a zinc-processing byproduct, typically refined to 6N for electronics. Its applications are narrower but no less sensitive: silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors for high-speed RF and mixed-signal circuits, fiber-optic components, infrared night-vision optics, and high-efficiency solar cells for space. That set concentrates in defense, telecom infrastructure and satellite electronics.

Refining, not mining, is where control sits

The most important structural point in this whole area is easy to say and easy to get wrong. China's dominance across the critical mineral set sits far more in refining and chemical processing than in raw mining. For some minerals the two figures diverge enough that reading them as mining statistics leads to the wrong diversification strategy. A new mine in Australia does not, by itself, reduce exposure to a chokepoint that sits three process steps downstream, at the refinery gate.

Gallium and germanium are the extreme case, because neither has a mine of its own. Mining share is barely a meaningful concept. What matters is refined output, and here my source shows a real spread. The USGS places China's share of primary, low-purity crude gallium above 98%. A Stimson Center and Fastmarkets synthesis places China's share of refined gallium closer to 80%. The gap likely reflects the difference between crude output at the point of byproduct recovery and value-added refined product further down. High-purity 6N gallium for wafer substrates draws extra, smaller-scale capacity from Japan, Germany, Slovakia and Kazakhstan. My source reports the range, 80% to 98%, and does not pick a side, because the sources do not converge. I follow it.

Germanium's sources agree more closely. China's refined germanium share is consistently reported at roughly 60% to 70%, with the balance held by Teck Resources in Canada, Umicore in Belgium and smaller US and Finnish capacity.

From geology to policy lever: the export controls

The concentration became a policy lever in August 2023, when China's Ministry of Commerce invoked national security law to mandate individual export licences for gallium and germanium compounds, including Ga2O3, GaAs, GaN, GeO2 and GeSi. Each application faces a 30-to-60-day end-use audit before a licence is granted or denied. A tariff is a price. A licence audit is a decision, renewed shipment by shipment, about which foreign buyers keep operating.

The price evidence is consistent in direction even where magnitudes vary by source. Reported price spikes in Europe during 2025 ran as high as 365% for gallium and roughly 400% for germanium, alongside unwrapped-gallium exports reported near zero through much of the year. Industry synthesis of the broader 2023 to 2026 period places spikes across the affected minerals at roughly 200% to 600%, depending on the mineral and window. Licensing friction added to the price effect: approval rates for European buyers' applications were reported below 25% in certain sectors at points in the period. So the practical disruption for some buyers ran beyond what price alone suggests.

Three features of the sequence

Reading the timeline end to end, three things stand out to me. Each control targeted a mineral where China's refining share was already dominant. The escalation has been managed more than undone, with individual bans suspended under trade talks while the licensing machinery itself grew. And the April 2025 heavy rare earth controls differ from the earlier ones: gallium, germanium, antimony and tungsten controls each came with at least one suspension or reversal, and that rare earth measure had none.

My source also places gallium and germanium controls inside a broader supply-chain risk framework. Export-control levers are the only chokepoint category that is a deliberate policy choice, not an accident of industrial history. China refines over 98% of the world's gallium on the basis used in that chapter, an input critical to GaN power semiconductors and GaAs RF modules, and the licensing regime converts a geological and refining concentration into an active licensing chokepoint. Note that this uses the upper end of the range above.

India: 100% import dependence, early-stage response

For India the picture is stark. USGS-sourced data puts India's import reliance for electronic-grade gallium, germanium, indium and high-purity polysilicon at 100%. There is no domestic production of these materials at the purity electronics needs. On the magnet side, India imports roughly 93% of its rare earth permanent magnets from China as of FY2024-25, with reported stockpiles for only two to three weeks of disruption. That is a rare earth figure, not a gallium or germanium one, but it shows how a single-source dependency looks elsewhere in the same portfolio.

The reserves picture adds a twist. India holds an estimated 6.9 million tonnes of reported critical mineral reserves but produces only about 2,900 tonnes a year of mine output, under 1% of global supply. My source attributes that gap not mainly to geology but to unresolved exploration data, permitting friction and a lack of downstream demand pulling in investment. Its clearest example is the Salal-Haimana lithium deposit in Jammu and Kashmir, inferred at 5.9 million tonnes of ore, which went through two failed auction tenders in 2023-24.

What is being done

The response has scaled up since 2023. That year the Ministry of Mines published a list of 30 critical minerals and began auctioning blocks. The centrepiece is the National Critical Mineral Mission, with an outlay of INR 34,300 crore (roughly US$3.96 billion) over seven years, made up of INR 16,300 crore of direct government spending and an expected INR 18,000 crore from public-sector undertakings and others. It targets 1,200 exploration projects and the auction of 100-plus blocks by FY31, and its stated scope runs from exploration to recovery from end-of-life products and e-waste. A separate INR 7,280 crore rare-earth magnet scheme followed in November 2025, and the 2026-27 Union Budget announced Dedicated Rare Earth Corridors in four states. On the sourcing side, KABIL has a lithium exploration agreement in Argentina and a 2022 memorandum with Australia's Critical Minerals Office.

Two gaps deserve to be named. My source finds no confirmed programmatic link between the Mission and the India Semiconductor Mission or the SPECS scheme. They look like parallel tracks, and how mineral-mission output would qualify a fab for incentives is marked as an evidence gap. It also has no India-specific customs and logistics lead-time data for critical mineral imports. I would not claim either, and it would be wrong to assume that a mineral mission automatically feeds a gallium refinery.

Why byproduct status shapes everything

It is worth pausing on the byproduct point, because it changes how supply responds to demand. Refining capacity for gallium and germanium tracks the base-metal industries they piggyback on, aluminium and zinc, and not semiconductor demand. If demand for GaN chargers doubles, nobody opens a gallium mine. The only response is to recover more from streams that already exist, or to add refining capacity downstream of them. That is slow and depends on the economics of a much bigger industry whose main product is something else.

It also explains why the concentration is so hard to unwind. China's position in aluminium refining and zinc processing gives it access to the feedstock streams at scale. Anyone else who wants a share needs both the feedstock and the refining process to reach 6N or 7N purity. My source is direct on this: a refinery that can hit electronics purity is a different and slower problem than opening a mine, and it needs process know-how and contamination control. Western and allied governments are already working on gallium and germanium feedstock through recycling, according to the same source, but recovering feedstock is still not the same as refining it to wafer grade.

Where the metals end up

The end uses are worth listing, because they show why governments care. Gallium feeds GaAs for handset power amplifiers, optoelectronics and LEDs, and GaN for 5G base-station amplifiers, EV onboard chargers and fast-charging adapters. In a companion piece I follow GaAs into the 5G handset, where the amplifier stage is one of the few places a compound semiconductor is essential. Germanium goes into SiGe transistors, fiber-optic components, infrared night-vision optics and space solar cells, which concentrates it in defense, telecom and satellite work. Indium, a zinc byproduct as well, feeds indium tin oxide for displays and indium phosphide for optical communications, and it appears in India's 100% import list.

The thread through these uses is that the quantities are small and the substitutes are poor. A GaAs amplifier cannot easily be swapped for a silicon one, for the physical reasons I set out in the compound-semiconductor piece. That is why a licence audit on a small tonnage can disrupt a large downstream industry.

How to read a range

Two of the figures in this piece come as ranges because my sources genuinely disagree, and it is worth saying what a careful reader should do with them. China's gallium share is 80% to 98% depending on whether you measure crude output at the point of byproduct recovery or refined product further down the chain. Neither is wrong. They measure different things. For a buyer of 6N wafer-grade gallium, the lower figure may be the relevant one, because Japan, Germany, Slovakia and Kazakhstan add some capacity at high purity. For a buyer worried about the upstream feedstock, the higher figure describes the leverage. My advice is to ask which stage of the chain your own exposure sits at, and pick the figure that matches it.

Reading India's numbers together

Several of India's figures fit together into one story, and it is not a simple one. India has an estimated 6.9 million tonnes of reported critical mineral reserves and produces roughly 2,900 tonnes a year, under 1% of global supply. At the same time it imports effectively 100% of its electronic-grade gallium, germanium, indium and high-purity polysilicon. These two facts are not contradictory. Reserves are not refined product. Even a country with reserves can be fully import-dependent if it lacks the refining step, and for gallium and germanium the refining step is the whole game.

India's midstream strengths, as documented, sit in rare earths and mineral sands. IREL runs a rare earth extraction plant at Chatrapur, Odisha, and a refining unit at Aluva, Kerala, with roughly 6 lakh tonnes per annum of processing capacity across ilmenite, rutile, zircon, sillimanite and garnet. That is a meaningful base, but my source says it has not yet turned into commercial-scale separation of heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and terbium. Nothing in my source describes an Indian gallium or germanium refinery. I would treat that as the honest answer: the gap is not documented as being closed.

What a real path might require

I will be careful here, because the book does not provide a roadmap and I do not want to invent one. What the evidence does support is a set of conditions. There has to be a feedstock stream, and the Bayer process at an aluminium refinery is the natural place for gallium, which suggests any Indian route would begin with cooperation between alumina refiners and a specialist refiner. The purity has to reach 6N to 7N, which is a contamination-control problem more than a capital problem. And the output has to be qualified by a downstream buyer, which is the same qualification barrier that appears throughout the semiconductor materials chain. Whether the National Critical Mineral Mission funds that specific chain is the open question in my source, since the Mission's stated scope is broad but a link to the semiconductor incentive schemes is undocumented.

The rest of the policy picture is early-stage relative to the scale of dependence. The Mission's INR 34,300 crore over seven years, the block auctions and the magnet scheme are real, and they target the full chain. They are not yet a gallium answer. That is a fair reading of the evidence, and I would resist any framing that says the problem is being solved.

What to take away

Here is how I would summarise it. Gallium and germanium are byproducts, so the lever is refining, not mining. China's share of refined gallium is 80% to 98% depending on basis, and germanium roughly 60% to 70%. Export licensing since August 2023 has turned that concentration into a live constraint, with reported price spikes up to 365% to 400% in Europe in 2025. India imports effectively 100% of electronic-grade supply, and its policy response, while large, is early-stage and targets the wider mineral chain rather than gallium refining specifically. The next question for Indian policy is not whether a mine can be found. It is whether any refining capacity to 6N or 7N can be built, and on the evidence in my book that remains open.