Industrial raw materials include both natural and man-made materials used by industries to produce products or services. They can be grouped into consumables, such as fuels and water, and materials that are converted into other products, such as ore, timber, and crops. Examples of raw materials include coal, natural gas, electricity, iron, steel, copper, kaolin clay, phosphate rock, timber, animals, crops, and man-made fibers like nylon and polyester. Many industries exist only to convert certain raw materials into other materials that can be used by other industries.
The term raw materials is sometimes used to describe only those materials that occur in nature, but in reality, industrial raw materials are any type of basic material used by any industry to produce a product or service. This is an extremely broad category, and while entire books could be written on each of the various raw materials used by industries around the world, it is possible to roughly group them by type and give some specific examples of some of the more common ones. The most basic division is into consumables, such as industry-specific fuels and water, and materials that are converted into other products, such as ore, timber, and crops.
Supplies, or consumables, are a category of industrial raw materials. All industry requires some kind of power to run its machines and factories, but some industries use specific types of energy as they are more suited to their purposes than others. This category includes coal, natural gas, electricity and, in some cases, even firewood. Iron and steel industries, for example, use a large amount of coal for their kilns, and some industries, such as small pottery makers, consume the wood in their kilns. Wood is used as fuel by many restaurants, distillers and charcoal producers, for whom wood is not just a consumable but a raw material that is converted into a product.
The other broad category of industrial raw materials also includes those materials which are converted or manufactured into products or services. Commodities in this group fall into several subcategories. Ores, ores, and other mined materials make up a large part of all industrial raw materials, much of which is further refined into materials, such as steel, copper, kaolin clay, and phosphate rock, used by other industries.
Some of these products can also be classified as consumables, such as coal, crude oil and the uranium used as fuel in nuclear reactors. Minerals and ores are an extremely diverse group and some examples of minerals include silica, which is used in the production of glass, aggregates used in the production of cement, rock salt and gypsum. Ores of metals such as lead, tin, copper, iron and others are mined and consumed by industry in quantities amounting to millions of tons worldwide each year.
Organic natural resources are another group of materials that are converted into products or services. This category includes timber, animals harvested for food and other products, and crops grown for food, textiles, and other products. Millions of trees are cut down each year for lumber, paper and fuel. Some trees are used as a source of crops, some of which are used for food, such as nuts and fruit trees. Others, such as rubber trees, produce raw materials, which produce raw latex, which is used in hundreds of types of rubber and other products. Fish and animals that are trapped or farmed for fur and food also fall into this group.
Many animal by-products, both terrestrial and aquatic, are used as feedstock by other industries, including the red pigment, cochineal, which is derived from a type of insect. Animal by-products are found in a large number of products, such as shellac and gelatin, used in some foods and many other industries. The swim bladders of some fish species are used to clarify beer.
Another type of industrial raw materials are those man-made materials, all converted or manufactured in some way from natural materials. Every man-made product is the result of other products or materials that, to some degree, originated from natural resources. Many industries exist only to convert certain raw materials into other raw materials that can be used by other industries. An example of this is fabric manufacturers, who take materials like cotton, linen, and man-made fibers like nylon or polyester and convert them into bulk fabrics for use by apparel manufacturers. Another would be the steel industry which uses raw iron ore to make steel, which is then used by hundreds of other industries to make their products.
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