Where do raw materials come from?

Answer 1

They are created by nature. But this is a confusing question to address because where a raw material comes from depends entirely on which raw material you are talking about. Essentially the term raw material means the essential ingredient for initialising the manufacture of a product in industry when unwrought or in an unprocessed or minimally processed state. The term raw material is usually taken to include all primary industry products such as minerals and some agricultural products such as timber or fleeces, but there are differing definitions as to precisely what is a raw material.

But certain raw materials are of economic importance in world trading because of their uneven occurrence in different countries as well as because of the greater demands made for them by industrialised countries. So some nations, most noticeably the USA hold large stocks of these raw materials which are of strategic importance.

So looking at an example crude oil is perhaps the most important raw material in the world's industries. The main countries from where that particular raw material comes from are Saudi Arabia, Russia, the USA including Alaska, Iran, Kuwait, the North Sea, Iran, China, Mexico, Iraq, Nigeria, Libya, Kazakhstan, Qatar, and Indonesia. In those countries the existence of that raw material means oil reservoirs have been formed over very many years from hydrocarbon material buried deep enough for subterranean heat to have cooked and because fluids beneath the surface also organized themselves into a layer of water below the oil layer and a layer of gas above it

So in the past and present century the raw material crude oil after extraction by drilling is transported by merchant ships known as tankers or rlse by pipelines to the location where that raw material is refined. Its end product after further processing can be gasoline (or petrol in UK English) vital for fuel in cars, trucks (lorries), aircraft, ships and trains; as well as fossil fuel to generate electricity at oil power stations all over the world and the product petroleum is also the raw material for many other chemical products, including plastics, pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers and pesticides all derived originally from the raw material crude oil.

Another important raw material is coal which is a combustible sedimentary rock found in rock strata in layers or veins called coal seams. So that raw material may come from mines in China, USA, India, the European Union, Australia, Russia, Indonesia, south Africa or Kazakhstan. Throughout history, that raw material has been used as an energy resource, which like oil is primarily burned for the production of electricity and/or heat, and is also used for certain industrial purposes, such as refining metals.

Another important raw material is iron ore, iron being one of the most widely distributed and abundant raw materials in the crust of the earth, the chief ores of iron and steel being the oxides and the carbonate. As a raw material the tern iron ore basically means minerals and rocks from which metallic iron can be economically extracted.

But iron ore is also the raw material used to make pig iron, which is one of the main raw materials to make steel and iron ores containing high quantities of hematite or magnetite are known as "natural ore and can be fed directly into iron-making blast furnaces. Iron ores are in many cases transported in ships called bulk carriers from such locations as Canada (mainly in Quebec Province) , Brazil, Australia, Norway, South Africa and various other parts of the world as the vital ingredient in producing steel all over the world.

There are so many other raw materials it is not just possible to go into any further detail of these in answering a single question on wiki answers unless you specify in your question which industry and/or which particular raw material you are interested in?

Answer 2

Underground or plants E.g oil = raw material from under ground coal = raw material from undergound... cotten = raw material form plants