Industrial minerals - towards a future growth

Abstract

The Norwegian mineral industry has shown pronounced growth in recent years, and production and export of industrial minerals (sensu stricto), aggregates and dimension stone have all increased, whilst the production and export of metallic ore has descreased. This is a trend that has been going on for many years. The trend for industrial minerals is to a large degree related to the increased production of calcium carbonate slurry for paper. The total production value of Norwegian industrial minerals reached around 2370 mill. NOK in 1997. The terms of volume around half of the produced industrial minerals are exported. The export value 1997 was 2260 mill. NOK - including some minor imported minerals, an increase of 20.5 % over 1996. This figure can also be compared to a total export value of approximately 700 mill. NOK in 1989. An understanding of the real value of domestically produced industrial minerals is not gained purely from production value and export figures of the minerals. In fact, domestically produced industrial minerals form the basis and are important for many other industries, including the production of ferrosilicon, Mg-metal, TiO2-pigment, Paints, Chemicals and cement. Together with the production of aluminium, paper and Si-metal, which to a large degree is based on imported raw materials, these industries have a total annual turnover probably in the order of 40,000 mil. NOK.