Raw Materials

Raw materials can be explained as substance or material used in the manufacturing or

primary production of goods. Generally, raw materials are natural resources like oil, wood,
and iron. Raw materials are often altered for use in various processes prior to being used in
the manufacturing process. Raw materials are also referred to as commodities, which are
purchased and sold on commodities exchanges throughout the world.

Norway has rich variety of quartz resources and is the main producer of quartzite and
high purity quartz in Europe. Industrial quality quartz occurs in pegmatites, hydrothermal
veins and quartzites. The Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) has been active in locating
and investigating most of the known deposits; in recent years dedicated surveys and sampling
of various quartz resource types have been undertaken throughout the country.

Pegmatites often contain very pure quartz and in Norway quartz has been produced
periodically in two main provinces: The Drag area close to Narvik in Northern Norway and
in Setesdal and surrounding areas in Southernmost Norway. Currently only very minor
production takes place in South Norway, but in Drag the company The Quartz Corp extracts
and processes both local and imported high purity quartz. They also exploit a hydrothermal
vein in Svanvik close to the Russian border. Recently NGU-surveys have located pegmatites
on the Southwest coast of Norway with interesting qualities of high purity quartz.

Norway is also Western Europe’s sole producer of nepheline syenite, a rock which is
used in the glass and ceramics industries. Annual production from the Sibelco Nordic mine at
Stjernøy in Finnmark is 320,000t. Norway has been the world’s largest producer of olivine
for many decades (generally ca. 40 % of world production) : olivine is used in a range of
refractory applicants and as a flux in iron ore pellets. Sibelco Nordic produced ca. 1.6 Mt/a in
2015 from its deposits at Åheim in Møre-og-Romsdal county. Norway has a potential for
several types of mineral in addition to the commodities in production such as apatite,
fluorspar, talc, hard-rock aggregate, sand and gravel.