It's the same reason natural cryolite isn't used - it's not economically viable. Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products. Aluminum isn't hard, just potentially more expensive.
> While I'm nit-picking...
Me too, Pinjarra is where the refinery for the largest producing bauxite mine is. And the refinery operates today because of cheap coal in Australia.
As is the case with many industrial minerals, it's often far cheaper to ship raw ore or concentrates to smelters built where electricity is cheap. Aluminum is no exception, and electricity cost is the reason there is a refinery in Iceland, despite being far from any bauxite mines.
The story really isn't that no country can't make a can of Coke, but why they don't. It's a fascinating story, unfortunately mostly told through feasibility spreadsheets.
I'm in the industry and it's not hard to think of all the steps ranging hundreds of millions of years to put an apple on my desk (there's volcanoes and inland seas! Dinosaurs if you stretch your mind!). This is a good summary. If he got any deeper, it'd be a book.
Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products
Who grows cinnamon, vanilla, coca, and kola? How many countries grow all four, because I doubt it's "lots". Do they also have some form of sugar and aluminium industries? (or steel/tin industries for different kinds of cans, or glass industry for bottles (with something for caps)?)
Besides, saying "oh, but countries could, they just don't" is having your cake and eating it too - the fact that countries don't because it's massively uneconomical means that yes, it does take multiple countries to produce a can.
It's a bit like saying "it takes a superpower to land men on the moon". Oh, sure, you could say "no it doesn't - throw enough private enterprise together and get someone there", but the point remains, no-one will - it still takes a superpower to land men on the moon.
> While I'm nit-picking...
Me too, Pinjarra is where the refinery for the largest producing bauxite mine is. And the refinery operates today because of cheap coal in Australia.
As is the case with many industrial minerals, it's often far cheaper to ship raw ore or concentrates to smelters built where electricity is cheap. Aluminum is no exception, and electricity cost is the reason there is a refinery in Iceland, despite being far from any bauxite mines.
The story really isn't that no country can't make a can of Coke, but why they don't. It's a fascinating story, unfortunately mostly told through feasibility spreadsheets.
I'm in the industry and it's not hard to think of all the steps ranging hundreds of millions of years to put an apple on my desk (there's volcanoes and inland seas! Dinosaurs if you stretch your mind!). This is a good summary. If he got any deeper, it'd be a book.