Kazakhstan's trade in non-food raw materials: focus on EU-Kazakhstan trade relations

This report is a factsheet developed as part of a series of country-level trade fiches feeding into a module of the Raw Materials Information System (RMIS) dedicated to raw materials analysis in the context of Russia's aggression against Ukraine and its impact on the EU's strategic dependencies. It provides a data-driven overview of Kazakhstan's trade in primary, processed and secondary non-food materials, focusing on its trade relations with the EU. The novelty is the product coverage for non-food raw materials, which we have defined by allocating the trade flows available in the COMTRADE database at the HS 6-digit level to a Material/Product aggregate sorted out of downstream commodities and corresponding to the broad categories of Abiotic, Biotic and Energy. Kazakhstan is a net exporter of non-food raw materials and its trade is dominated by exports of Energy commodities, which are directed mainly to the EU. However, in 2020, China (USD 5 billion) and Russia (USD 3.2 billion) were the main destinations for the Kazakhstan's exports of Abiotic raw materials, while the EU accounted for only USD 0.7 billion. In addition to Energy products, Kazakhstan is also an important EU supplier of several Biotic and Abiotic raw materials, including critical ones such as phosphorus, titanium and platinum. Among the EU suppliers of non-food raw materials, Kazakhstan ranks second for phosphorus and chromium and sixth for silicon.