From Mineral Projects to Resilient Supply: Value-Chain Bottlenecks in EU Strategic Projects and Ukraine's Mineral Assets

Abstract European raw-material security depends not only on deposits and mine output but also on whether materials can be processed and used by European industry. We assess when a mineral project can strengthen supply resilience by combining investment maturity with six conditions that link a project to a recipient plant: material identity, grade match, validated processing, available capacity, a commercial connection and product qualification. The analysis covers all 13 Strategic Projects selected outside the European Union (EU) in the first round under the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) and a purposive set of Ukrainian mineral assets, using dated public evidence to 30 September 2026. Ten of the 13 projects were in preparation; the three in implementation accounted for 5.8–12.0% of the cohort's disclosed investment budgets, and no complete supply route to a qualified EU recipient could be verified. On a selected Ukrainian graphite route to an Italian purification pilot, processing is the binding constraint under stated assumptions: if the pilot accepts Ukrainian feed and an operating mine's nominal capacity is available to the route, a planned 50 kt/y mine raises route throughput only once purification capacity exceeds about 6.1 kt/y, some thirty times the 200 t/y pilot under construction. Issuer-reported unit values for purified graphite and Ukrainian concentrate differ about 4.6-fold. EU accession and recovery of occupied deposits would change institutions and investment options, while supply would still depend on the same project gates. Strategic Project registers should publish stage-compatible evidence, and policy should target the bottlenecks that limit usable supply.