Every metal travels the same arc — from rock in the ground to the part inside a phone, a turbine or a fuel rod, and back again as scrap. TSM organises that arc into five primary-source pillars. Each pillar names the bodies who actually publish the reference numbers — never a press summary, never a re-write. One True Source for All.
The same strip appears on every metal page, with the current commercial form highlighted — so a reader on /metals/copper/ instantly sees where copper sits in the chain (LME Grade A cathode, at Refine).
Ore extraction, beneficiation, concentrates and treatment / refining charges (TC/RC). The starting point — and the only stage where reserves and country-level production are reported.
Smelting to crude metal, refining to commercial purity. This is where exchanges quote (LME, COMEX, SHFE) and where the most-watched benchmarks live — LBMA Gold, LME Grade A copper, LPPM platinum, JM PGM Base Prices.
Sheets, plates, wire, tubes, bars, foils, powders — the half-finished forms that leave a rolling mill or wire plant and enter a factory. Specifications come from standards bodies, not from price reporters.
Where the atom actually does work — automotive, electronics, construction, jewelry, energy, defence, medical. Demand share by application is published by industry councils, not by exchanges.
End-of-life and process scrap re-enters as secondary metal — often at a fraction of mining's carbon and water footprint. Scrap is its own market with its own grades (ISRI specs), prices and policy frameworks (EPR, EU CRM Act).
Open any of the 61 metals in the Hub. A chain-strip under the hero shows exactly where that metal's commercial form sits — copper at Refine (LME Grade A cathode), iron ore at Mining (Fe2O3 lumps / fines), lithium at Refine (battery-grade hydroxide). One click jumps to the relevant block on the page.
Browse all metals →The Atlas layers the same five pillars geographically — mines, smelters, refineries, ports, recycling plants. Toggle a pillar on/off to see how one stage of the chain is concentrated in a country or region.
Open TrueAtlas™ →The world's largest metallurgical chain — 1.89 Gt crude steel a year. Four production routes (BF-BOF, EAF, NG-DRI, H₂-DRI), seven stages from iron ore to recycled scrap, top 10 producers and CO₂ intensities side by side. All numbers from WSA, IEA and USGS MCS.
Open Steel deep-dive →