A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished products, energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedstock, the term connotes these materials are bottleneck assets and are required to produce other products.

The term raw material denotes materials in unprocessed or minimally processed states; e.g., raw latex, crude oil, cotton, coal, raw biomass, iron ore, air, logs, water, or “any product of agriculture, forestry, fishing or mineral in its natural form or which has undergone the transformation required to prepare it for international marketing in substantial volumes”. The term secondary raw material denotes waste material which has been recycled and injected back into use as productive material.

Iron ore

Iron ore can be found in a multitude of forms and sources. The primary forms of iron ore today are Hematite and Magnetite. While iron ore can be found throughout the world, only the deposits in the order of millions of tonnes are processed for industrial purposes. The top five exporters of Iron ore are Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, and Ukraine. One of the first sources of iron ore is Bog Iron. Bog iron takes the form of pea-sized nodules that are created under peat bogs at the base of mountains.