A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is

a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished products, energy, or intermediate
materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedstock, the term connotes these
materials are bottleneck assets and are required to produce other products. An example of this
is crude oil, a raw material used to produce a variety of products including all types of
furniture.[1] The term "raw material" denotes materials in unprocessed or minimally processed
states; e.g., raw latex, crude oil, cotton, coal, raw biomass, iron ore, air, logs, water, or "any
product of agriculture, forestry, fishing or mineral in its natural form or which has undergone the
transformation required to prepare it for international marketing in substantial volumes."[2]

Contents

 1Ceramic
 2Metallic
o 2.1Iron ore
 3Conflicts of raw materials
 4See also
 5References
 6Further reading

Ceramic[edit]
While pottery originated in many different points around the world, it is certain that it was brought
to light mostly through the Neolithic Revolution. That is important mostly because of its ability to
store and carry a surplus of supplies for the first agrarian. Although most jars and pots were fire-
clay ceramics, Neolithic communities created kilns that were able to fire such materials to
remove most of the water to create very stable and hard materials. Without the clay from the
ground from that region, the Neolithic Revolution would have never grew as it has in the past.
Using these kilns, the process of metallurgy was possible once the Bronze and Iron Ages came
upon the people that lived there.[3]

Metallic[edit]
Many raw metallic materials used in industrial purposes must first be processed into a usable
state. Metallic ores are first processed through a combination of crushing, roasting, magnetic
separation, flotation, and leaching to make them suitable for use in a foundry. Foundries
then smelt the ore into usable metal that may be alloyed with other materials to improve certain
properties.[4] One metallic raw material that is commonly found across the world is iron, and when
combined with nickel, this material makes up over 35% of the material in the
Earth's inner and outer core.[5] The iron that was initially used as early as 4000 B.C. was
called meteoric iron and was found on the surface of the earth, as this type of iron came from the
meteorites that struck the earth before the humans appeared and was in very limited supply. This
type of iron is unlike most of the iron in the earth, as the iron in the earth was much deeper than
the humans of that time period were able to excavate. The nickel content of the meteoric iron
made it not need to be heated up, and instead, it was hammered and shaped into tools and
weapons.[6]
Metallic raw materials on earth are very close to running out. The current throwaway economy
hardly ever reuses the materials that are found in the earth, and unless that changes, there is a
very limited amount of time before certain materials from the earth run out.
Between lead, tin, copper, iron ore, and bauxite, there are at most 70 years left unless more
readily available veins of materials are found in the near future.[7]
Vyasanakere Iron Ore Mine

Iron ore[edit]
Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today
are Hematite and Magnetite. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits
in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes.[8] The top five exporters of
Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine.[9] One of the first sources of iron
ore is Bog Iron. Bog iron takes the form of pea sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at
the base of mountains.[10]

Conflicts of raw materials[edit]

Places with plentiful raw materials and little economic development often show a phenomenon,
known as "Dutch disease" or the "resource curse, which occurs when the economy of a country
is mainly based upon its exports because of its method of governance.[11] An example of this is
the Democratic Republic of The Congo.
Raw materials are also used by non-humans, such as birds using found objects and twigs to
create nests.