Raw Material Procurement Challenges

“The metal of electrification ⚡️” Copper is largely used in today’s society to the point that in western world the average demand per person is in the range of 200-250 kg (‼️). However its #future demand is unanimously seen exploding as the electrification process driven by clean #energy transition requires massive use of copper. If on demand side, prospects appear bright, challenges are a bit concentrated on the other side of equation: supply Further to declining quality of resources, the main issue is that developing new sources of supply is quite problematic and often not moving fast enough to cope with the needs. The IEA analysis showed that took well in excess of 10 years on average to move mining projects from discovery to first production. Such long lead times appear uncompatible with the fast deployment of new #greentech envisaged in a cleaner system. It is evident that #innovation - both in terms of metal substitution and reduced use per application - as well as recycling are factors that can help in mitigate shortages. However, it is quite impressive seeing top executives from mining companies emphasizing that stimulating #investment in new sources of supply is not (only) function of prices and that there is the risk of a trade-off between satisfying the decarbonisation goals of the #economy and efforts to lift large parts of the world out of poverty. “King” copper is set to keep its reign for long time…

Empowering Artisans Through Sustainable Raw Materials: A Revolutionary Initiative by Craft Village Transforming Natural Waste into Livelihood Opportunities Imagine a world where raw materials for traditional crafts are available at no cost—how significantly would this impact artisans? Craft Village, in its commitment to fostering self-reliance under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative, has pioneered an innovative approach to sustainable craft production. By utilizing natural grasses such as lotus and water hyacinth, this initiative not only empowers artisans but also addresses critical environmental challenges. Harnessing Abundant Natural Resources for Sustainable Craftsmanship India’s lakes and water bodies are increasingly clogged with invasive vegetation like water hyacinth, disrupting ecosystems and affecting freshwater sources. Governments spend crores annually on mechanical cleaning methods, which leave a considerable carbon footprint and generate excessive bio-waste. Recognizing this challenge, Craft Village introduced a sustainable model that repurposes these abundant natural resources into valuable craft materials, thereby reducing environmental damage while revitalizing lost artisanal knowledge. Reviving Traditional Knowledge and Strengthening Artisan Economies Historically, India’s agrarian communities thrived on a circular economy where farm residues were transformed into craft products. This sustainable approach ensured economic stability, facilitated trade through barter systems, and nurtured craftsmanship as a vital part of family enterprises. Craft Village’s intervention is rekindling this tradition by equipping artisans with the knowledge to convert wild grasses and agricultural residues into high-value craft products. Economic and Environmental Impact Raw material costs typically account for 50-60% of an artisan’s total production expenses. By providing access to free natural resources, Craft Village significantly enhances artisans’ earning potential, reduces production costs, and promotes environmentally sustainable practices. This initiative also presents a viable alternative to plastic-based materials, fostering a cleaner and more sustainable future. A Call for Sustainable Policy and Industry Adoption This initiative serves as a model for policymakers, industry leaders, and sustainability advocates to explore innovative solutions that integrate environmental responsibility with economic empowerment. Supporting such initiatives can help scale traditional crafts, preserve heritage skills, and reduce dependency on industrially manufactured materials that contribute to pollution. Craft Village’s interventions underscore the need to rethink raw material accessibility, ensuring that artisans not only sustain their livelihoods but also contribute to a greener planet. By leveraging nature’s abundance, we can create an ecosystem where sustainability and economic growth go hand in hand.

Thinking of entering defence? Good. But read this first, or get crushed. You’re not building a startup. You’re entering a war zone with Excel sheets instead of bullets. And here’s the first landmine: Defence doesn’t care about you. Not until you matter. And by the time you matter, it might be too late. So here’s your brutal, field-tested playbook 👇 🔻 1. Run a Dual-Use Strategy or Die Trying Don’t “pivot into defence.” Don’t “add military as a target customer.” Build something with teeth in both markets — or you’ll starve while waiting 24 months for a MoD reply. Dual-use = survival. Omni-use = dominance. 🔻 2. Your Actual Competitor? Paper. You're not fighting primes. You're fighting outdated workflows, 94-page requirement PDFs, and evaluation committees who’ve never used the tech. You’re not selling innovation. You’re selling the idea that innovation should exist. 🔻 3. Never Ask for Feedback — Ask for Budget Lines Everyone will “love” what you’re doing. They’ll invite you to panels, workshops, incubators. None of that pays your team. Ask: “Which budget pays for this in Q4?” If they can’t answer, walk. 🔻 4. Find a Uniformed Insider, or You’re Screwed No matter how good your pitch is, you need a believer inside the system. Someone who speaks procurement and can say, “This solves my mission.” Without that: enjoy limbo. 🔻 5. If You’re Not Testable, You’re Not Real Defence doesn’t buy PowerPoints. You need a testable MVP fast. No test = no traction. No traction = no procurement route. No route = you're just theatre. 🔻 6. The First Deal Will Break You It’s slow. It’s painful. It’ll take months, maybe years. But once you break the wall once, you become “pre-approved.” Then the real business begins. 🔻 7. Ignore All of This If You're Building Slideware This advice is only for builders. For founders ready to live in uncertainty, raise from niche VCs, and get 50 no’s before one test flight. If you're not all-in: stay in SaaS. This is the most misunderstood opportunity of our time. Europe is waking up. The U.S. is doubling down. And the next industrial revolution will wear camouflage. Startups who learn the terrain will dominate. Speed. Testability. Dual-use. Insider access. That’s your survival kit. Use it. #DefenceStartups #DualUse #InnovationInDefence #OmniUse #MilitaryTech #InsiderIntel #BoldMovesOnly #WakeUpEurope

Try Running A Defence-Focused Business When There’s No Money, Just uncertainty. We are living in a world that is fragmenting fast. Geopolitically. Economically. Industrially. Threats are multiplying. Timelines are compressing, and yet, the funding signal for defence simply isn’t there. The Defence Investment Plan was meant to provide Clarity, Direction and Confidence. Instead, it’s delayed, again amid reports of a £28bn funding gap and continued ambiguity over priorities, sequencing, and political commitment. From the outside, this looks like “process”. From the inside, where industry actually has to make decisions, it’s paralysis. This isn’t speculation. As Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton told the Defence Select Committee: “We are not at a stage yet where we understand precisely what the cost of the programme will be, and even with increases in defence spending, we will not be able to do everything we wish to do as quickly as we might want to do it.” 👉 That’s the reality. There is a challenge finding the money and everyone knows it. You cannot build defence capability on hope, intent, or briefings. 🤷♂️ Businesses can’t hire. 🤷♂️ They can’t invest. 🤷♂️ They can’t commit capital, lock suppliers, or scale production. 👉 When they don’t know if, when, or how government will spend. Even flagship programmes are now wobbling. 😩 GCAP delayed. 😩 Capability gaps acknowledged but deprioritised. 😩 Industrial partners openly warning they cannot subsidise UK capacity indefinitely. For SMEs? It’s brutal, they’re being asked to: 👉 Align to priorities that aren’t defined 👉 Carry risk the state won’t underwrite 👉 Innovate without procurement certainty 👉 Absorb delays created by political indecision All while being told defence is “critical”, “urgent”, and “strategic”. There’s a contradiction at the heart of this system. We say defence is existential, but we fund it like it’s optional. We talk about resilience, but we tolerate capability gaps. We demand innovation, but we starve the ecosystem that delivers it. This isn’t about blame, It’s about a system that cannot currently move at the speed the world demands. You cannot surge industrial capacity overnight. You cannot rebuild lost skills quickly, and you cannot expect businesses to commit when the state won’t. The most dangerous thing right now isn’t a lack of ideas, It’s a lack of credible commitment. If we don’t fix that, culturally, commercially and politically, we won’t just lose programmes, we’ll lose the companies, the people, and the sovereign capability we’ll desperately need later, when it’s far more expensive to recover. 🤷♂️ That’s the real risk. Debate and points of view welcome. #DefenceIndustry #DefenceSpending #NationalSecurity #ProcurementReform #IndustrialStrategy #SovereignCapability #SupplyChain #HardTruths #TimeForChange #Leadership

India's Critical Mineral Paradox: Sitting on a Goldmine While Importing at Premium Prices I’ve spent time building businesses across consumer tech, telecom, and industrial sectors. Reading Alkesh Kumar Sharma’s strategic analysis on critical minerals was a wake-up call: India is racing toward clean energy leadership while dangerously dependent on imports for the very minerals that make it possible. Here’s the link: https://lnkd.in/dpjKHMsb This isn't just policy. It's national security and controlling our destiny in the 21st century economy. The vulnerability: India is 100% dependent on imports for lithium, cobalt, and nickel, over 90% for Rare Earth Elements. China controls 60% of global REE production and 85% of processing. We're targeting 500 GW renewable energy and net zero by 2070, while handing veto power over our clean energy future to geopolitical competitors. Having run P&Ls across markets, I know 100% import dependence isn't a supply chain. It's a strategic chokepoint. But India is sitting on untapped wealth. Geological Survey identified 5.9 million tonnes of lithium in J&K, significant REE deposits in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Yet mining contributes just 2.5% to GDP versus 13.6% in Australia. We have only 1% of global REE processing capacity. The government launched the National Critical Minerals Mission with ₹34,300 crore and auctioned 20 mineral blocks. The 2023 Mines Act opened private exploration. But execution determines everything. The urban goldmine: India generates 4 million tonnes of e-waste annually, only 10% formally recycled. Inside? The same minerals we're importing at massive cost. Attero proves what's possible. This Noida-based deeptech company achieves over 98% extraction efficiency in recovering rare earths like neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium, the exact elements we currently import. With over 200 patents filed and strong profitability, Attero’s revenue crossed approximately ₹1,000 crore in FY25, growing more than 50% year-on-year. The company works with all leading auto and battery manufacturers and is now expanding capacity sixfold to process 3 lakh tonnes annually, backed by significant capital infusion across India, Poland, and the US. India banned black mass exports, powder from shredded batteries we exported as cheap scrap to China, Korea, Japan who sold it back at 15-20x the price. This ban forces domestic refining. Attero proves we have the technology. The window is closing. If we don't build resilient supply chains through domestic mining, processing, and recycling, we're building our clean energy future on someone else's foundation. We have deposits, waste streams, and companies like Attero proving Indian technology competes globally. What we need is execution speed. #CriticalMinerals #CleanEnergy #AtmanirbharBharat #Sustainability #India

China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while the Chinese government drafts a new regulatory system. Once in place, the new system could permanently prevent supplies from reaching certain companies, including American military contractors. The official crackdown is part of China’s retaliation for President Trump’s sharp increase in tariffs that started on April 2. On April 4, the Chinese government ordered restrictions on the export of six heavy rare earth metals, which are refined entirely in China, as well as rare earth magnets, 90 percent of which are produced in China. The metals, and special magnets made with them, can now be shipped out of China only with special export licenses. But China has barely started setting up a system for issuing the licenses. That has caused consternation among industry executives that the process could drag on and that current supplies of minerals and products outside of China could run low. If factories in Detroit and elsewhere run out of powerful rare earth magnets, that could prevent them from assembling cars and other products with electric motors that require these magnets. Companies vary widely in the size of their emergency stockpiles for such contingencies, so the timing of production disruptions is hard to predict. https://lnkd.in/gtYDenwP

The Union Budget’s announcement to develop dedicated rare earth and #criticalmineral corridors across #TamilNadu, #Kerala, #Odisha, and #AndhraPradesh comes at a decisive moment for India and the global economy. This initiative is not merely about mining - it is about strategic autonomy, clean industrial growth, and long-term economic resilience. Today, China controls over 60% of global rare earth mining and nearly 85% of processing capacity, creating significant supply-chain vulnerabilities for clean energy, electric mobility, electronics, defence systems, and advanced manufacturing. In contrast, countries such as the United States, Australia, and the European Union are aggressively building domestic capabilities, strategic reserves, and recycling ecosystems to reduce dependence on concentrated supply sources. Rare earth elements are essential inputs for EV motors, wind turbines, solar technologies, semiconductors, batteries, defence electronics, and medical equipment. As India targets large-scale EV adoption, renewable energy expansion, and domestic semiconductor manufacturing, secure access to critical minerals becomes non-negotiable. The proposed corridors—spanning mining, processing, R&D, and manufacturing create an integrated ecosystem rather than fragmented interventions. Equally important is the opportunity to supplement primary mining with secondary sources. Estimates indicate that India’s e-waste alone could yield nearly 1,300 tonnes of rare earth elements, while mine tailings and industrial waste offer additional recovery potential. Last year’s ₹1,500 crore allocation for extracting critical minerals from waste streams was an important start, but scale, coordination, and regulatory clarity are now essential to unlock meaningful impact. The regulatory framework must evolve accordingly. E-waste Management Rules should clearly classify critical minerals as high-value strategic resources, not residual waste. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks must go beyond compliance and actively incentivise recovery, recycling, and reuse. At the same time, India’s large informal recycling sector—currently operating without safety nets must be formalised through technology transfer, skilling, access to finance, and transition incentives, ensuring both environmental protection and dignified livelihoods. From an economic and urban governance perspective, the implications are significant. Rare earth corridors can catalyse clean manufacturing clusters, generate high-skill employment, and reduce import dependence. Cities and industrial regions will benefit from value-added manufacturing, innovation ecosystems, and circular-economy models that align growth. If executed with coordination and clarity, this initiative can deliver multiple dividends: lower emissions, reduced waste, enhanced competitiveness, skilled job creation, and greater self-reliance.

For those of us closely following the critical minerals ecosystem, the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 distils the key trends that we have witnessed firsthand: growing concentration in supply chains is now a grave concern, making diversification the watchword for energy security.   Despite the surge of lithium demand to nearly 30% in 2024, the findings reflect a price drop by 80% since 2023, driven largely by increased output from dominant producers. Such price volatility masks a deeper vulnerability by 2035, excluding the top producers, global supply would meet only half the projected demand. Any disruption, be it geopolitical, climatic, or technical can trigger severe supply shocks.   This holds particularly true for graphite, the unsung backbone of the EV battery revolution. While its demand grew by 6–8% last year, with the energy sector now accounting for the lion’s share, over 70% of graphite refining remains concentrated in China. This has raised serious concerns about downstream capacity built-up and its role.   Long recognizing these structural risks, Epsilon Advanced Materials Pvt. Ltd. has focused on building integrated facilities across India, North America, and Europe to cater to the entire value chain. This strategy has enhanced our control over supply and quality, while also reduces exposure to global chokepoints.   I believe that building a resilient and diversified supply chain is not only feasible, but imperative. When we step back and see the forest for the trees, it becomes clear: true energy transition rests on secure access to materials like graphite and a long-term vision can help us achieve this, at scale.   Read the report here: https://lnkd.in/dT5mbhT6   #CriticalMinerals #Graphite #BatteryMaterials #EnergySecurity #SupplyChain #Epsilon #EVTransition #Clean #Energy

A ₹10 coin-sized magnet could stall India’s entire EV dream. That’s how critical rare earth magnets are to our auto industry. When China restricted exports of rare earth minerals, it hit the global auto industry hard & India harder. Despite sitting on 7 million tonnes of rare earth reserves, India still imports 90% of its high-performance magnets from China. These tiny components power everything from your car’s window motor to its electric drivetrain. And now, Indian automakers are warning that production lines could halt by July if the magnet supply doesn’t resume. So why can’t we just make our own? Because we never built the supply chain. Rare earths are tough to extract, tougher to refine, and we’ve been late to the game. Yes, India is moving. New mining auctions, public-private partnerships, even recycling efforts. But building a full mine-to-magnet pipeline could take 5–6 years. Until then, we stay exposed. To one supplier. One policy. One disruption away from an industry-wide shock. We covered the full story in today’s Finshots. Link under my profile.

Your Procurement Cycle is a Minefield of Risks. Are You Walking Blind? Procurement Excellence | 17 JAN 2026 - Procurement always navigates hidden risks that can derail projects, inflate costs, and tarnish reputations. Ignoring them? That’s the real risk. Here are 7 CRITICAL risks lurking in your procurement cycle + how to defuse them: #1. Performance Risk ↳Suppliers underdelivering on quality/timelines. ↳Fix: Clear KPIs. Penalty clauses. Regular performance reviews. #2.Specification Risk ↳Vague requirements lead to wrong deliverables. ↳Fix:Collaborate with stakeholders upfront & freeze specs before sourcing. #3. Supplier Financial Risk ↳Bankrupt suppliers = halted operations. ↳Fix:Run credit checks, diversify suppliers, demand financial disclosures. #4. Reputation Risk (ESG) ↳Child labor or pollution in supply chain = brand crisis. ↳Fix: Supplier ESG screenings. Audits. Sustainability clauses. #5. Price Volatility Risk ↳Market swings crush budgets. ↳Fix: Fixed-price contracts. Hedging strategies. Cost-indexed clauses. #6. Fraud & Corruption Risk ↳Kickbacks, fake invoicing, collusion. ↳Fix: Segregate duties. Whistleblower policies. AI-powered anomaly detection. #7. Contract Leakage Risk ↳Unused discounts, auto-renewals, scope creep. ↳Fix:Centralized contract repository. Milestone alerts. Spend analytics. #Bonus I: Over-Reliance Risk ↳One supplier holds 80% of your spend. ↳Fix: Strategic supplier diversification. #Bonus II: Cybersecurity Risk ↳Suppliers accessing your systems >>data breaches. ↳Fix:Vendor security assessments. Zero-trust architecture. #Bonus III: Supply Disruption Risk ↳Natural disasters, geopolitics or supplier failures. ↳Fix: Dual sourcing, Safety stock & Real-time supply chain monitoring. Risk Mitigation Playbook: ✅ Proactive: Map risks at EVERY stage ✅ Use AI for predictive analytics, blockchain for traceability. ✅ Train & empower teams to spot red flags early. ✅ Collaborate & partner with Legal, Finance, Operations. Risk-aware procurement NOT about avoiding suppliers Procurement can’t own risk alone! Build resilient, ethical & agile supply chains that drive sustainable value. What risks keep YOU up at night? ♻️ Share to help someone in your network. ➕️ Follow Frederick for more content like this. #ProcurementExcellence #RiskManagement #Leadership