Greece's mineral resources

Greece is among the leading producers of perlite in the world and leads Europe in the production of bauxite and bentonite. It also produces important quantities of magnesite and nickel. Greece exports about one-half of its extracted minerals, but its substantial production of lignite is consumed internally. The country has few reserves of petroleum, and it must import most of its oil and natural gas.

The Country

Greece is a small, mountainous country occupying the southern portion of the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe. It has a deeply indented coastline, and its more than 1,400 islands and islets make up about one-fifth of its area. Devastated in World War II, Greece’s economy expanded considerably starting in the middle of the twentieth century, thanks in large part to economic aid from other countries, trade with the rest of Europe and the Middle East, and a steadily increasing influx of tourists. The rapid industrialization that the country experienced starting in the 1970s encouraged a shift of population from rural areas to cities and created serious air and water pollution. In the twenty-first century, the country has struggled with the effects of a sharp economic decline triggered by the global recession that began in the late 2000s.

In 2023, Greece had an estimated gross domestic product (GDP) in purchasing power parity of $375.78 billion. Greece joined the EU in 1981, and in 2023, its per-capita GDP was estimated to be $36,300, compared to $53,800 in the European Union as a whole. Industry accounted for approximately 16 percent of GDP, with agriculture accounting for 4 percent and service industries accounting for the remaining 68 percent. The value of the country’s exports is only about two-thirds of the value of its imports.

Bauxite, Alumina, and Aluminum

Greece possesses Europe’s largest known deposits of bauxite, the mixture of minerals from which aluminum is indirectly refined. Bauxite is regarded as the only naturally occurring material that the country exploits at full capacity. Greece is believed to have reserves of more than 100 million metric tons of bauxite, with most of the deposits concentrated along the central mountain region of Parnassus-Giona-Helikon and on the country’s second largest island, Euboea, in the western Aegean Sea. Both underground and open-pit mines are operated.

Greece mined an estimated 1,448 thousand metric tons of bauxite in 2021. Its output of alumina, which represents an intermediate stage in the production of aluminum, reached an estimated 860,000 metric tons in 2023. Greece was one of the largest supplier of bauxite in the European Union, although its increasing ability to produce its own aluminum has led to greater domestic consumption of bauxite and alumina.

Bauxites Parnasse Mining Company pioneered the extraction of bauxite in Greece in 1933. However, only with the creation of Aluminum of Greece S.A. did the nation’s production of the metal itself begin. Aluminum of Greece—founded by a conglomerate headed by the French-owned firm Pechiney and involving the American company Reynolds Metals as well as public and private Greek funding—began operations in the 1960s. The firm S&B Industrial Minerals S.A. supplied the company with ore and went on to absorb Bauxites Parnasse in 1996, while Aluminum of Greece merged with Mytilineos Holdings S.A. in 2007. As of 2023, most Greek bauxite production was under the direction of European Bauxites S.A.

Perlite

According to the US Department of Agriculture, Greece produced an estimated 0.71 milion on metric tons of the material in 2022, making it the third-largest in the world behind China and Turkey. Perlite is a volcanic glass whose particles expand to many times their original sizes when heated and is used extensively in construction, horticulture, and industry. It has also proven useful in dispersing oil spills at sea. Perlite is found associated with sites of ancient volcanic activity in the northeastern region of Thrace and on several islands in the southern Aegean Sea, including Melos, Kos, and Gyali—the last of which is also a major source of pumice.

One of the largest miners of perlite in Greece and the world is S&B. The company maintains several open-pit facilities on Melos, where it discovered deposits in 1954 and opened the continent’s largest facility in 1975. It operates another mine on Kos. The company exports most of its production to Europe, North America (where Armstrong Industries is a major customer), and Asia. Smaller producers include S&B subsidiary Otavi Mines Hellas S.A., with operations on Melos, and Aegean Perlites S.A., on Gyali. Easy access to inexpensive transportation by ship has helped these companies maintain an international price advantage. Thanks to a project sponsored by the European Union, the expansion process necessary to perlite’s commercial utilization has also been greatly enhanced in recent years, resulting in higher quality.

Bentonite and Kaolin

In 2024, Greece was one of the world's leading producers of bentonite. Its total output (crude and processed) amounted to 20.85 million metric tons in 2020 and exports of $50.4 million. Bentonite is a clay utilized in iron ore pelletizing, in foundering, as a binding agent in cement and adhesives, and in pet litter. The material is usually formed from the weathering of volcanic ash, and deposits are found on Melos and, to a lesser extent, the island of Cimolus. It is mined from the surface in both locations.

As is the case with many of the country’s other minerals, the bentonite market is dominated by S&B. Mediterranean Bentonite S.A. also operates a small surface mine on Melos, but S&B accounts for about 85 percent of the country’s production. Most is exported to other countries of the European Union and to North America.

Greece also possesses deposits of a second type of clay, kaolin, near Drama in the northeastern part of the country. The country produced an estimated 45 million metric tons of kaolin in 2021, which was worth $4.24 billion.

Nickel

The common, industrially important element nickel is utilized primarily in the manufacture of stainless steel and other alloys. Greece mined an estimated 13.703 million metric tons of nickel ore in 2022. The country is thought to have nickel reserves of 250 million metric tons, with deposits concentrated on the Aegean island of Euboea, on the mainland near Larimna opposite Euboea, and in northwestern Greece near the Albanian border. Deposits in the first two regions are “transported,” or secondary, meaning that they have been eroded and redeposited in new locations by natural forces—a situation that makes for easier extraction. The deposits of ore in the north evolved in place, and while they are more difficult to mine, they contain a higher content of nickel.

Greece’s primary nickel producer (and one of the largest in the world) is the state-controlled General Mining and Metallurgical Company S.A. (LARCO), which was founded in 1963 and operates complexes of underground, open-pit, and closed-pit mines. Its oldest operation is at Agios Ioannis near Larimna, the ore from which it began smelting in 1966. The company’s mines in Euboea went into operation three years later. Today LARCO is one of the world’s largest producers of iron-nickel alloys and exports to a number of steel manufacturers in Western Europe.

Magnesite and Huntite

Magnesite ore and its various processed forms—“dead burned” magnesia, calcined magnesite, and so on—have a variety of uses, including the manufacture of refractories (the linings of furnaces and the like) and synthetic rubber. The ore is also one of the sources of the important industrial metal magnesium. High-grade deposits of magnesite are found in the Chalcidice peninsula in the northern part of Greece as well as in Euboea, but the latter deposits were not exploited after 1999.

Greece produced an estimated 380,000 metric tons of magnesite in 2023. Grecian Magnesite S.A. is the only active producer in Greece and the largest in the European Union. The company operates open-pit mines near Yerakina, where it also crushes and processes the magnesite into various application-specific grades, and exports virtually all its production to other European Union countries.

Deposits of the related mineral huntite are found in the Kozáni basin in the northern province of Macedonia (not to be confused with the Republic of Macedonia). It is used in paper coatings and sealants and as a component of flame retardants. Greece is virtually the only commercial source for huntite and produced an estimated 13,500 metric tons of the mineral in 2017, most of it for export. White Minerals S.A. and Microfine Hellas S.A. are the two producers.

Greece was a world leader in the production of pumice in 2014, producing an estimated 430,000 metric tons. By 2022, the country exported $20.5 million in pumice, highly porous volcanic glass is used in horticulture and, particularly outside the United States, as aggregate in construction. Pumice is found on several Greek islands in the southern Aegean Sea. It was once mined on Thíra (also known as Santorini), but today the only extraction taking place is on the island of Gyali, where pumice was deposited approximately 200,000 years ago by a volcano on the nearby island of Nísiros. Lava Mining and Quarrying Company, a subsidiary of Heracles General Cement, is Greece’s only pumice producer as well as the largest pumice exporter in the world. The company quarries the pumice without the use of explosives and loads ships by means of a complex series of conveyor belts.

Lava Mining also quarries and distributes other industrial materials associated with ancient volcanic activity. It extracts pozzolanic rock at Xylokeratia on Melos and gypsum at Altsi on the island of Crete, with the bulk of its production of both materials going into the domestic manufacture of cement. The microcrystalline quartz it quarries on Melos is used in glass and ceramics.

Lignite

Lignite, or brown coal, is Greece’s only important natural fuel source, and in 2022, with other fossil fuels, it accounted for about 54 percent of the country’s power generation. Greece is thought to possess reserves of nearly 3 billion metric tons of lignite in more than forty widely scattered basins, the largest of which is in Macedonia. Lignite is an inferior grade of coal, and the deposits in the Megalópolis region in the Peloponnese Peninsula are of particularly poor quality. A large deposit in the Drama basin is also of poor quality and remains relatively unexploited. Greece produced an estimated 13.703 million metric tons of the material in 2022, most of it from open pits.

Virtually all Greek lignite is mined by Public Power Corporation (PPC) S.A., which was founded in 1951 to exploit the reserves in Aliveri on the island of Euboea. A second company, Ptolemais Lignite Mines (LIPTOL), undertook a larger operation to extract the material from the Ptolemais deposit in the Pindus Mountains of northern Greece, eventually leading to one of the most substantial lignite mining and processing operations in the world. PPC acquired 90 percent of LIPTOL in 1959, and the two merged in 1975. PPC owns rights to about 60 percent of Greece’s known lignite reserves, using most of the material itself. The company, which is state-controlled, generates virtually all of Greece’s electrical power.

Lignite’s use as an energy source poses serious environmental problems, and Greece has been under pressure from the European Union to modernize its operations or eliminate its use of llignite to reduce carbon emissions. Greece has committed to ending its use of lignite by 2028 and reducing its carbon emissions by 55 percent by 2030 and becoming net zero by 2050.

Other Resources

Greece possesses modest deposits of gold, silver, chromite, lead, barite, and zinc. S&B has been active in identifying further deposits of gold, and Thracean Gold Mines S.A. (of which S&B is a part-owner) discovered a substantial deposit in Thrace in 1998. By 2023, Greece produced 5,000 barrels per day and in 2021 had reserves of 10 million barrels.

Marble has been quarried throughout Greece for millennia, and the country produced an estimated 150,000 cubic meters of the stone in various sizes of cuts in 2007. By 2022, Greece exported $152 million in marble. Greece also produced about 60,000 metric tons of dolomite and 95,000 metric tons of flysch in 2007. Salt production yielded an estimated 195,000 metric tons the same year.

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