Industrial minerals

In the broadest definition, industrial minerals are all those minerals, including construction materials, with an economic use typically excluding energy minerals, metals and gemstones (except where the latter has industrial applications, such as diamond). The UK produces a wide range of industrial minerals including:

• ball clay
• barite
• building stone
• chalk
• china clay (kaolin)
• clay and shale
• construction aggregate
• fluorspar (fluorite)
• gypsum
• industrial limestone and dolostone (dolomite)
• polyhalite and potash
• salt (halite)
• sand and gravel
• slate
• talc

Mineral planning factsheets

Mineral planning factsheets are available for most of these UK industrial mineral commodities, covering:

• demand, supply, trade and consumption
• economic importance
• structure of the industry
• raw materials
• reserves and resources
• relationship to environmental designations
• extraction and processing
• by-products
• alternatives and recycling
• effect of economic instruments
• planning issues

In addition, there is a mineral commodity profile for fluorspar and a factsheet on the potential for graphite in the UK. Other industrial mineral reports and maps are avilable to download.

Industrial mineral mines and quarries

The Directory of Mines and Quarries contains details of mines and quarries working industrial minerals in the UK and the UK Minerals Yearbook has statistics for the production of industrial minerals in the UK. BGS’s onshore GeoIndex shows the locations of industrial mineral resource occurrences, planning permissions and operations (both current and historic).

For further information on industrial minerals please contact: Clive Mitchell, BGS Industrial Minerals Geologist.