Potassium

Potassium is the seventh most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust and the lightest after only lithium. As it is highly chemically reactive, it does not naturally occur in its elemental form, which is silvery in colour and soft enough to cut with a knife.

Potassium is an essential macronutrient for humans that is necessary for the maintenance and growth of tissues, muscles, and organs. It can also be used to manufacture detergents, explosives, glass and respiratory devices.

Many potassium-bearing surface ores primarily contain insoluble forms of potassium, which are difficult to extract, so it is typically mined from solid compounds found in lake beds via electrolysis. Potassium can also be obtained from salts in oceanic saltwater.

Potassium-bearing minerals and refined products are generally referred to as potash, particularly in agriculture; so-called potash fertilisers usually contain potassium. The vast majority of potassium is used to manufacture such fertilisers, with potassium chloride (KCl) – known as sylvine – being the most common source of potash fertilisers as it has high concentrations of soluble potassium. Alongside sylvite, the predominant ores containing sylvine and other minerals that are common sources of potassium include carnallite, kainite, langbeinite, and polyhalite.

Canada, Russia, and Belarus accounted for approximately 70% of the world’s potash production in 2022, and these  countries remained leading producers in 2025. Potassium reserves are not consistently reported with the same methodology. Brazil and Canada each hold an estimated 1.1 billion tonnes of known reserves of potassium oxide (K₂O) equivalent, while both Israel and Jordan recover potash from the Dead Sea, which contains approximately 2 billion tonnes of potassium chloride.