Industrial minerals include all the non-fuel
and non-metallic minerals and in the context of this web site, they exclude construction
aggregates which are treated here as a separate sector.Industrial minerals are generally the least understood sector of
the mining industry in terms of identifying common economic, technical and marketing
characteristics. There are over 200 minerals in this group and it is rare to find a single
company producing more than four or five of these minerals. Markets for each of these
minerals are often diverse, highly technical and require unique marketing and sales
expertise. Industrial minerals are found in a wide diversity of industrial and consumer
products and play key roles in many complex and sophisticated manufacturing and processing
applications throughout the world.
Industrial minerals are used in a multitude of uses such
as ornamental stone for building facings, specialized absorbents for oil spills, gemstones
in the fashion industry, ceramic components in the aerospace industry and silicon in
microchips. Companies vary in size from small "mom and pop" operations to large
multi-national, chemical corporations. Many of the mineral products are critical to the
industries where they are used as catalysts, blending constituents, extenders, fillers,
etc. Industrial minerals are not only strategic to modern day manufacturing and
processing, but also to developing new product and process applications, following
research and development successes in advanced materials science.
Industrial mineral sales in British Columbia have
ranged from C$40 to C$50 million over the last eight years. The industrial minerals sector
currently employs about 500 people (see Figure 1). When the Cassiar Asbestos Mine operated
in the 1980’s, the industrial minerals sector was substantially larger, with annual
sales generally exceeding C$100 million and more than 500 people employed. In recent
years, some of the more important industrial mineral products produced in British Columbia
are asbestos, barite, gemstones, gypsum, limestone, dolomite, dimension stone, magnesite,
pumice, silica, soapstone and talc, smelter gas and elemental sulphur, clay, pyrophyllite,
diatomite and zeolites.
