Where does vanadium come from?

Vanadium's reserve total has swung by more than mining could explain. USGS put world reserves at 26 million tonnes in its 2023 summary, 19 million in 2024, 18 million in 2025 and 21.5 million tonnes in 2026, so the net drop from the first to the last edition is 17% (our arithmetic; each edition is a separate USGS estimate). That drop is more than 13 times the 335,300 tonnes of vanadium content mined in 2023 to 2025 (USGS MCS and the site's how much is left series). Mining cannot account for changes that size, and the data do not say what does. Cover by country, from 18 years for Brazil to 238 for Russia at 2025 output, is on country reserve life.

Czechia looks like a processing hub in the customs data. In 2024 it was the largest importer of vanadium oxides and hydroxides (HS 282530), taking 19% of world import value with 8,962 tonnes. It was also the third-largest exporter of ferrovanadium (HS 720292), with 4,972 tonnes and 16% of world export value (CEPII BACI, weights and values from the customs table). Weight leaving was 55% of weight entering, while value was 26% higher. The two lines cover different materials, so the pair is a pattern and not a mass balance.

The United States has cut its reliance on imported vanadium while reporting no mine output. Net import reliance, the share of apparent consumption met by net imports, fell from 61% in 2021 to 41% in 2025, and USGS puts 2025 secondary supply at 7,500 tonnes against consumption of 13,000 tonnes, or 58% (USGS MCS 2026; see US import reliance). The US was also the largest buyer of ferrovanadium in 2024, with 13% of world import value. Canada, Czechia and Austria together supplied 91% of its imports (our arithmetic on CEPII BACI; see supplier exposure).

In 2025 USGS credited China with 82,000 tonnes of vanadium content in mine production, 72% of the world's 113,300 tonnes (USGS MCS). Russia followed with 19%, then Brazil (4.7%) and South Africa (4.4%). Only 4 countries report output in that table, and the top three account for 96%. World output changed -4% on the previous year, with South Africa's estimate falling sharply. USGS also notes that it revised China's 2024 figure significantly on the basis of a government report, so comparisons with earlier editions of the summary need care.

Reserves stand at 21.5 million tonnes, and the distribution looks quite different from output: Australia is listed with 47%, China with 27% and Russia with 23% (USGS MCS). Australia reports no mine production at all in the table. USGS footnotes that Australia's reserves under the JORC reporting code, or an equivalent standard, are far smaller than the figure printed in the table, so the headline reserve share overstates how much of the world's vanadium is economic to mine in that country. Reserves are also an imperfect guide because vanadium is usually a byproduct or coproduct, and USGS says demonstrated resources therefore do not fully indicate available supply.

USGS says most Chinese output originates as a coproduct from vanadiferous titanomagnetite ores processed during steelmaking. The industry body Vanitec describes three routes: mining the ore directly, recovering vanadium from the slag formed when that ore is made into iron and steel, and secondary recovery from refinery residues, fly ash and spent catalysts. Vanitec's breakdown, which rests on references from around 2009 and 2010, put slag as the largest, so the proportions may differ.

The United States illustrates the gap. USGS reports no American mine output, because mining of uranium-vanadium sandstones on the Colorado Plateau in Utah stopped in early 2020 and was not restarted in 2025, yet the country still produces vanadium. That production is secondary, made in several states from petroleum residues, spent catalysts and utility ash, and it has risen in each year of USGS's 2021 to 2025 series. None of it appears in the world mine production table.

Austria was the largest exporter of ferrovanadium (HS 720292) in 2024 with 20% of world export value, ahead of China (19%) and Czechia (16%), on world trade of $670.5 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 13%, followed by Netherlands (11%) and Germany (9.9%).

The leading exporters of ferrovanadium are not the leading miners. Austria and Czechia have no entry in the mine production table, and neither does South Korea. Vanadium reaches them as oxide, as slag or as recycled material and leaves again as alloy, so the export ranking measures alloy-making rather than mining. The Austrian company Treibacher says it is the largest vanadium producer in Europe and recovers vanadium from spent catalysts, which is consistent with exports built on processing, though this page does not claim that explains the whole Austrian or Czech position.

The secondary line, vanadium oxides and hydroxides (HS 282530), tells the opposite story. In 2024 the largest exporters were Russia (24%), China (21%), Brazil (19%) and South Africa (15%), on world trade of $451.7 million. Those are exactly the four countries in the mine production table. The largest importers of oxide were Czechia (19%) and Netherlands (16%), which have no mine output in the table either. USGS lists Canada and Austria as the main sources of United States ferrovanadium imports and Brazil and South Africa as the main sources of pentoxide in 2021 to 2024.

The values are in dollars and mix grades and chemical forms, and vanadium shipped as slag, ash, catalysts or master alloy is not in these two headings, so the tables are not a measure of contained tonnes.

This page quotes no vanadium price, because there is no free public benchmark series. Prices are assessed by private reporting agencies, and USGS itself sources its price lines from one of them, Argus Media. It publishes two annual averages: a Chinese price for vanadium pentoxide on a 98 percent V2O5 basis, and a United States price for ferrovanadium of 78 to 82 percent vanadium content. Reproducing those assessment series would need a license this site does not hold.

What can be said is how the market works. Vanadium is sold in several forms that are not interchangeable: pentoxide, ferrovanadium for steel mills, vanadium-aluminum master alloy for titanium producers, and the high-purity oxide and electrolyte used in batteries and chemicals. Each has its own assessment and its own buyers, and the high-purity grades are a separate market from standard material. Steel mills use vanadium only as a small addition to each tonne of steel.

The two USGS averages show that regions and products can diverge. For 2025 USGS reports the Chinese pentoxide price lower than in 2024 and the United States ferrovanadium price higher. USGS describes vanadium as largely dependent on the steel industry, particularly the Chinese steel sector. Because the forms, grades and regions are assessed separately, a single global number would mislead.

USGS says vanadium, like most ferroalloys, depends on the steel industry, and especially on Chinese steel because of its weight in world production. Most vanadium goes into strengthening steel, so a slowdown in Chinese construction and infrastructure steel is felt directly. Vanitec reports that China made its rebar standard mandatory from September 2024 and that industry experts expect the requirements to support vanadium demand, though it also reports that rebar output was weak in the first half of that year.

Because most output is recovered as a coproduct of processing vanadium-bearing titanomagnetite, supply is set mainly by how much of that ore is turned into iron and steel, not by the vanadium price alone. USGS identifies this as the origin of most Chinese output.

A smaller part of supply comes from mines whose main product is vanadium, such as Largo's Maracás Menchen operation in Brazil, which began producing vanadium pentoxide in 2014. Their output is tied more directly to vanadium demand than that of coproduct producers, and USGS's table shows how much a single country's estimate can move from one year to the next.

Spent catalysts, petroleum residues and ash are a real source. In the United States all domestic vanadium is secondary. AMG describes itself as the world's largest recycler of vanadium-bearing refinery waste, and Treibacher says it recovers vanadium from spent catalysts. The supply of this feedstock follows oil refining and fuel burning rather than steelmaking.

USGS says that flow batteries continued to be installed in large-scale storage in 2025, helped by safety, long cycle life and suitability for medium to long durations, and supported by renewable energy growth and government policy. The same chapter identifies high capital cost and limited availability of high-purity vanadium feedstock as obstacles, and competition from other grid-storage chemistries.

As of USGS's 2026 summary, United States tariffs on many Brazilian imports had been raised in August 2025, including on high-purity vanadium products but not ferrovanadium, and a major Brazilian supplier had sought an exemption, citing aerospace and defense uses. Those duties were imposed under emergency-powers legislation that the Supreme Court held in February 2026 does not authorize tariffs, and collection of such duties ended on 24 February 2026, so the position described by USGS has since changed.

In steel, manganese, molybdenum, niobium, titanium and tungsten are to some degree interchangeable with vanadium as alloying elements, and different combinations of alloying elements can replace it. USGS says no acceptable substitute exists for vanadium in aerospace titanium alloys, so substitution limits ferrovanadium demand but not the specialty uses.

The traditional route starts with titaniferous magnetite, an iron ore that carries vanadium. Vanitec explains that the ore is either mined and treated directly for vanadium or first made into iron, which carries the vanadium with it. The molten iron is then treated at low temperature with oxygen, which moves the vanadium into a slag. The method differs by country: spray refining in China, a special oxygen converter in Russia and a shaking ladle in South Africa. The slag is a far richer feedstock than the ore, since Vanitec gives the vanadium oxide content of the ore as around one to one and a half percent and that of the slag as well into double figures.

Ore or slag is then processed by roasting with a sodium salt, which converts the vanadium into a water-soluble form. The roasted material is leached, the vanadium is precipitated from the solution as a vanadate, and heating that precipitate gives vanadium pentoxide, the main intermediate. Bushveld's Vametco plant in South Africa describes the same salt-roast and leach sequence.

Pentoxide is sold directly to chemical and battery users, or reduced with iron present to make ferrovanadium, the form most steel mills buy. Vanitec lists ferrovanadium in grades of around 40, 60 and 80 percent vanadium, and aluminum-vanadium master alloys for titanium alloys. Secondary routes recover vanadium from uranium mining, refinery residues, coke, fly ash and spent catalysts, and finish in the same oxide and alloy products.

Everything on this page is vanadium content, as in the USGS tables. Tonnes of V2O5 and tonnes of vanadium are different measures, and USGS converts between them with a fixed factor.

Steel takes the large majority. USGS reports that metallurgical use, mainly as an alloying agent for iron and steel, accounted for far more than half of United States reported consumption in 2025, and Vanitec says steel applications account for the largest share of world consumption. It appears in high-strength low-alloy steels for structures, vehicles, bolts, tools and rebar, where a small addition raises strength.

The second metal use is titanium alloys. Vanitec notes the Ti-6Al-4V alloy in airframes and engines, and USGS says there is no acceptable substitute for vanadium in aerospace titanium alloys, which ties a small tonnage to a strategically important end use.

Chemicals are the major nonmetallurgical use according to USGS, in catalysts for making maleic anhydride and sulfuric acid, where platinum and nickel can replace vanadium in some processes.

The newest use is energy storage. In a vanadium redox flow battery the energy is stored in tanks of vanadium electrolyte, which is why capacity can be added by building bigger tanks. USGS reports installations increasing worldwide in 2025.

The chain runs from titanomagnetite mine to iron and steel plant, to slag, to roasting plant, to pentoxide and ferrovanadium, to the steel mill or battery maker. The mining step is not where the concentration shows, since vanadium is part of the iron ore business. The table shows output concentrated in China and Russia, and the steps after mining, slag recovery and chemical processing, are where vanadium becomes a saleable product.

For people who think about critical minerals, vanadium is an example of a market where the headline table understates the topic. The United States and the European Union both include vanadium on their current lists of critical or strategic raw materials, and the hub on critical minerals explains how those lists are drawn up (see also the glossary entry on a critical mineral). What matters for supply security is less who mines than who can turn slag, ash and catalysts into pentoxide and ferrovanadium, and, for batteries and aerospace, who can make high-purity material.

The United States holds no government stockpile of vanadium, according to USGS. Its net import reliance has fallen as domestic secondary production has grown, but it still imports ferrovanadium and pentoxide. Because vanadium is a coproduct, supply moves with the iron and steel industry described on the steel and iron ore pages, and a competing alloying element is covered on the molybdenum page. For the difference between producing, exporting and processing, see the explainer on the three.