New Study Identifies the Biggest Threats to Critical Mineral Supply Chains-and They May Surprise You

Highlights

• Price volatility and supply-demand imbalances ranked as the top risks to critical mineral supply chains, surpassing political conflict in a review of 103 peer-reviewed studies.
• Logistics, transportation, and supplier concentration are significantly understudied despite their growing strategic importance as supply chains grow more complex.
• Economic risks dominated the academic literature while social sustainability impacts received far less research attention across upstream, midstream, and downstream stages.
• The findings suggest supply chain resilience requires focus beyond new mining, emphasizing processing, refining, recycling, and logistics vulnerabilities.
• The study is currently a preprint and has not yet undergone peer review, so conclusions should be treated as preliminary.

As governments and manufacturers race to secure supplies of critical minerals, a new study suggests the greatest risks extend well beyond geopolitics. In a systematic literature review (opens in a new tab), Muhammad Irfan Kemal of the University of Melbourne, together with Guilherme Luz Tortorella, Wen Li, José Moyano-Fuentes, and Alice Erthal, analyzed 103 peer-reviewed studies to identify the disruptions that most threaten sustainable critical mineral supply chains. Their conclusion is striking: price volatility and supply-demand imbalances consistently emerge as the most important risks, ranking even ahead of political conflict when considering the entire supply chain.

The authors also found that logistics, transportation, and supplier concentration receive relatively little attention in the academic literature despite their potential importance.

Study Design

To conduct the study, the researchers followed internationally recognized PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews. They screened more than 1,300 academic papers from Scopus and Web of Science before selecting 103 high-quality studies published in leading journals. They then evaluated 19 different disruption categories across upstream mining, midstream refining and processing, and downstream manufacturing and recycling while examining impacts on economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Economic risks dominated the literature, while social impacts received far less attention.

Findings

The review found that price volatility, mining and processing constraints, trade restrictions, environmental and ESG issues, and health-related disruptions appear most consistently across the supply chain. By comparison, logistics and transportation disruptions, infrastructure failures, and supplier concentration have received much less research attention. The authors suggest these areas deserve significantly more study as supply chains become increasingly complex.

For Rare Earth Exchanges®, the findings reinforce an important reality. Supply chain resilience is about much more than opening new mines. The greatest value—and many of the greatest vulnerabilities—lie in processing, refining, logistics, recycling, and manufacturing. As governments invest billions to build non-Chinese supply chains, understanding how disruptions spread across every stage of production will become increasingly important. We would also note that recent export controls, processing bottlenecks, and shipping disruptions suggest logistics and midstream capabilities may pose greater strategic risks than the current academic literature fully captures.

Limitations

The authors acknowledge several limitations. Although the review synthesizes a large body of research, it is not new empirical research and relies on studies indexed in only two academic databases. The proposed disruption-ranking framework also requires validation across different minerals and supply chains. In addition, the manuscript is currently available as a preprint and has not yet undergone peer review, so its conclusions should be considered preliminary until formally published.

Citation: Kemal, M. I., Tortorella, G. L., Li, W., Moyano-Fuentes, J., & Erthal, A. Relevant Disruptions in Critical Mineral Supply Chain Sustainability: A Systematic Literature Review. SSRN Preprint (2026). Status: Preprint (not peer reviewed).