What does the Chromium production data show?

Chromium-production figures describe where a raw material used in manufacturing, construction, or chemical processing is extracted. Industrial minerals rarely make headlines, but production geography still matters, buyers in import-dependent countries track supplier concentration to avoid being caught short by a disruption in a single supplying country. Production of Chromium is highly concentrated: South Africa alone accounts for a large share of that output, so an export restriction or mine outage in the leading producer can move global availability quickly. Reported tonnages come from national geological surveys and industry returns and are revised as new figures arrive.

Chromium is classified by the U.S. Geological Survey as a industrial mineral. Primarily used in stainless steel production, providing corrosion and heat resistance. Also used in specialty alloys, chrome plating, and refractories. Global mine production in 2023 was approximately 44.0 Mt thousand metric tons (Cr content). 7 countries with reported production appear in the table above, covering essentially the full global mine supply.

South Africa is the world's leading producer of Chromium, accounting for roughly 41% of global mine output. The top three producers together control 79% of global supply and the top five hold 93%, making the market highly concentrated. Leading producers are South Africa, Turkiye, Kazakhstan, India, Russia. High concentration means prices and availability can move sharply on political events, export restrictions, or mine outages in one country, which is why these production shares sit at the heart of critical-minerals policy in the United States, the European Union, and Japan.

The United States imports approximately 71% of the Chromium it consumes, a figure the USGS publishes as "net import reliance as a percentage of apparent consumption" and updates annually. Click any country in the production table to open its full country profile, population, GDP, development indicators, and the full set of minerals it produces, so you can see the broader economic context behind the production share. All figures on this page are USGS estimates for data year 2023, released in the 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries, and they supersede earlier preliminary estimates.