The business perspective on materials criticality: evidence from manufacturers

The European Commission identified a group of materials that were claimed to be critical due to their high economic importance and high supply constraints, which could become bottlenecks for the deployment of emerging technologies and enabling sustainable production. Currently this discourse takes place at the industrial system level from a policy perspective, and it is unclear if what is perceived by policy circles as critical could be true for manufacturing operations. This paper explores how five EU manufacturing companies in different sectors and supply chains see materials criticality, and their strategies to mitigate such criticality. On the one hand, the results indicate the limited scope of the criticality factors and employed mitigation strategies considered, compared to those established in the literature. On the other hand, the findings point to the existence of interdependences between companies within and between supply chains, which should be incorporated into the materials criticality assessment, if viable implications for the industrial systems are to be developed. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for manufacturing companies and policy-makers, and suggests prospects for further research.