India is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for industrial minerals driven by rapid urbanization, infrastructure development, growth in manufacturing, and rising demand from sectors such as cement, ceramics, glass, chemicals, steel, and energy. India is also increasingly focusing on strategic and emerging industrial minerals aligned with the energy transition and advanced manufacturing. Minerals such as lithium-bearing ores, rare earth minerals, potash and graphite are gaining prominence due to their importance in electric vehicles, renewable energy, electronics, and fertilizer security. With growing importance of industrial minerals, the Govt. of India in a significant recent policy reform has reclassified quartz, feldspar, mica and baryte from minor minerals to major minerals ensuring centralized regulatory approach while improving scientific mining practices.

With a diverse geological endowment, our country is a major producer of key industrial minerals including limestone, bauxite, baryte, quartz and feldspar etc playing a critical role in both domestic consumption and global supply chains. India has produced about 450 million metric tonnes of limestone in FY 2024-25 with estimated value of Rs. 11,863 crore, holding significant share in production of the nonmetallic minerals sector. However, India remains significantly dependent on imports of magnesite, graphite and rare earth elements due to limited domestic resources and processing capacity in the country.

The increasing global demand of industrial minerals, especially for infrastructure development and emerging use in electric vehicle batteries, presents an opportunity for India to strengthen its production capabilities and position itself as a key player in the global supply chain. At the same time, challenges such as exploration, resource efficiency, value addition, logistics, energy transition, and compliance with evolving environmental standards demand collaborative solutions.

With a view to have sustained development of this sector, it is imperative that environment- friendly low carbon technologies are adopted in the area of exploration and extraction to enhance productivity and acquire competitiveness for growth of the industrial minerals sector. Further, appropriate market strategies are required to be formulated taking into account the constraints and compulsions of domestic and global markets. In background of the above, the ‘Conference on Indian Industrial Minerals’ is being organized by FIMI in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.