Uzbekistan is seeking to use the growing global demand for critical minerals not only to increase extraction, but also to develop its own processing industry. In early August, the country invited Indian companies to invest in the mining and metallurgical sectors and specifically called for technology, capital and expertise for the deep processing of copper and rare earth metals.
This approach reflects a broader shift in Uzbekistan’s economic policy. The country has a significant resource base: according to official data from Invest Uzbekistan, it ranks fifth in the world in gold reserves, eighth in copper reserves and twelfth in uranium reserves, while also possessing deposits of tungsten, molybdenum, lithium and rare earth elements. In 2025, the output of the mining sector amounted to approximately $17.6 billion, while the metallurgical industry generated more than $14.7 billion in the first ten months of the year alone. Gold production reached around 130 tonnes.
However, having substantial resource reserves in itself no longer guarantees a country the maximum economic benefit. A significant share of added value is created at subsequent stages – through raw material processing, the production of metals, components and finished products.
According to Alona Lebedieva, owner of the Ukrainian industrial and investment group Aurum Group, the transition from exporting raw materials to their deep processing could become one of the key tools for a new stage of Uzbekistan’s industrialization. This is no longer only about revenues from extraction, but about attracting technology, creating production facilities and building new value chains within the country.
This process is already taking on a tangible scale. According to the President of Uzbekistan, the country currently processes around 100,000 tonnes of copper, while taking into account projects being launched in 2026, deep-processing capacity is expected to increase to 240,000 tonnes. Over the past nine years, approximately $10 billion in foreign investment has been attracted to the mining sector. By 2030, the country also plans to increase copper production to 500,000 tonnes per year.
In addition, Uzbekistan is already implementing more than 70 projects in the critical minerals sector with a total value of $1.6 billion, involving companies from the United States, China and Türkiye. At the same time, the state is explicitly pursuing a policy focused not only on extraction, but also on deep processing and the production of high-value-added goods.
However, it is precisely at the stage of moving from extraction to full-scale industrial processing that the greatest challenges arise. Metallurgical and hydrometallurgical production requires significant volumes of stable electricity and water supply, developed logistics, as well as a large number of engineers and technologists. Predictable conditions for investors and genuine technology transfer are equally important. Therefore, the outcome of this strategy will depend not only on the volume of investment attracted, but also on how much of the production chain Uzbekistan is able to localize within the country.
Environmental requirements are also becoming a separate factor. Scaling up extraction and processing increases pressure on resources and the environment, while the ability of new enterprises to comply with modern environmental standards is having an increasingly significant impact on access to Western capital and international markets.
Alona Lebedieva notes that the current global environment is favorable for such a strategy. According to the International Energy Agency, prices for critical minerals began to rise again in 2025 and early 2026 after several years of decline. Base metals, including copper, aluminium and tin, increased in price by approximately one-third between January 2025 and April 2026, while prices for a number of strategic minor metals more than doubled. Tungsten, reserves of which are also found in Uzbekistan, increased sixfold in price over this period.
At the same time, the issue is not only the availability of resources, but also the concentration of their processing. According to the IEA, in 2025 the average share of the largest processor in key mineral supply chains, excluding rare earths, rose to 72%, compared with 70% in 2023. In some segments, virtually all of the increase in processing capacity was concentrated in a single dominant country. Moreover, even under the current pipeline of new projects, the world could face a copper supply deficit of approximately 25% by 2035.
This is why the world’s largest economies are seeking alternative suppliers, investing in new production sites and attempting to diversify supply chains.
In this context, Uzbekistan is increasingly building partnerships with major economies. At a business forum in New Delhi, Indian businesses were invited to participate in the development of gold, copper, uranium, critical mineral and rare earth extraction. Particular emphasis was placed on steel production and the deep processing of copper and rare earth raw materials. Around 400 Indian companies currently operate in Uzbekistan, while the portfolio of joint projects exceeds $5 billion. Trade between the two countries increased by 30% last year and exceeded $1.3 billion for the first time, while the next target has been set at $2 billion.
At the same time, the country is expanding cooperation with the United States. In June, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Uzbekistan launched a joint investment platform. Its priority areas include critical minerals, energy, infrastructure, transport and logistics, as well as advanced manufacturing. The platform is intended to help attract private capital and investment from international financial institutions.
The experience of neighboring Kazakhstan, which is also seeking to move from a raw-material-based model toward deeper processing of strategic metals, is illustrative for Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan already has more developed metallurgical capacity and production of higher-value-added goods, yet even there this transition is taking place gradually. A significant share of certain types of raw materials and semi-finished products is still exported without the maximum possible localization of subsequent production stages.
For Uzbekistan, this experience is important primarily because large reserves, investment and political support alone do not guarantee the rapid creation of a full production cycle. The decisive factors are technology, energy and transport infrastructure, skilled personnel and the ability to create conditions under which foreign partners find it commercially viable to locate not only extraction operations, but also processing facilities in the country.
Thus, global competition is increasingly focused not simply on access to deposits. Equally important is the question of where raw materials will be processed, where technologies and jobs will be created, and what share of added value will remain within the producing country.
According to Alona Lebedieva, the main challenge for Uzbekistan will be to turn its resource advantage into an industrial one. If the country succeeds in combining its own resource base with foreign technology, capital and the development of domestic processing, critical metals could become not merely a promising export category, but one of the drivers of a new stage of the country’s industrialization. However, the key measure of success will be not so much the growth in extraction itself as the depth of processing localization and the share of the added value created that remains within Uzbekistan’s economy.