Critical materials in supply chains: Securing the UK semiconductor sector

The UK's semiconductor industry - globally significant and strategically vital to everything from AI to defence - is built on a foundation of critical materials: raw and recycled minerals and chemicals that go into every stage of chip design and manufacture.

Of the 34 raw elements the UK government has designated as "critical," a substantial share are essential to semiconductor supply chains specifically; without them, there is no chip. Without a chip, there is no electric vehicle, wind turbine, data centre, innovation in photonics or neuromorphic computing, or AI. Dependency is only growing, global demand for critical materials in clean energy technologies alone is expected to quadruple by 2040, with materials like lithium, cobalt, and graphite rising 6 to 13 times current levels.

So where does the UK stand?

The UK holds some mineral deposits of its own, but building a fully self-reliant material supply chain isn't a realistic ambition. No single country holds all the resources chip production depends on within its own borders, so an international outlook will always be central to how the UK secures its semiconductor future. The UK is highly dependent on overseas sources, with materials such as gallium, helium and aluminium (all critical to chip manufacture) originating largely from a limited number of geopolitically sensitive regions, including China, Russia and the Middle East.

Building the capacity to both secure and recover these materials has become a matter of national security and sovereignty. Government has taken steps to respond, publishing the Vision 2035 critical minerals strategy and introducing a new "growth minerals" list in 2025. But the global policy landscape is moving fast, and recent global shortages of critical materials have already created real pressure on global chip companies. This same pressure has also illuminated key opportunities in novel chip design, advanced materials that reduce dependency, strategic international partnerships, and smarter use of the materials the UK already has.

From growing interest in the circular economy to EU alignment on technology sovereignty, the policy landscape shaping the UK's approach is developing rapidly, there is a significant economic and national security opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable critical mineral supply chain. If the UK is to secure its stake as a leader in semiconductor design, IP, R&D and manufacturing, and as a world leader in AI and compute, it is essential that the sector has the physical building blocks it needs to grow.

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