This paper presents concepts of value chains as strategic models for long-term development and a sustainable approach for ensuring efficiency. It highlights the fact that value chains are of particular importance in the raw materials industry, where the exploration, extraction, processing and metallurgy stages are characterized by high capital expenditure and fixed costs. Additionally, it emphasizes that offering an increasingly valuable product at each stage of production or processing makes it possible to increase earnings and achieve a higher margin. In order to give a practical dimension to the presented analyses, the paper provides an example of lithium value chains and identifies the determinants of their functioning in the current market together with their prospects. The conclusion highlights Europe’s need to source raw materials within business models based on value chains.

The global development of electromobility and the innovation of life are becoming increasingly noticeable. A direct implication of this is the increase in demand for modern products and services, their components and thus the raw materials necessary to produce them (e.g. cobalt, lithium, rare earth metals). In the European Union (EU), raw materials related to strategic sectors – renewable energy, electric mobility, defense and aerospace and digital technologies – show a very strong dependence on import throughout the entire value chain. In the case of eleven out of thirty of the so-called critical raw materials (CRM), necessary for the energy transition, the EU’s dependence on import exceeds 85%. Global supply chains, which had already been strained, were further affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the exacerbated geopolitical situations leading to even greater shortages of critical raw materials in Europe and leaving the industry facing challenges in securing access to resources. An implication of this was the European Parliament’s position on critical raw material legislation in September 2023, which called on the EU to increase its processing capacity across the value chain and enable the production of at least 40% of the annual consumption of strategic raw materials by 2030.
Growing importance in the transition to a low-emission economy is attributed to cobalt (Co), which is an essential component both in the production of electric vehicles (EV), stationary energy storage and in the developing sectors of wind energy, fuel cell systems and hydrogen storage technologies, robotics, unmanned vehicles (drones) and 3D printing as well as in digital technologies. Securing the supply of such raw material is crucial for the European Union’s economic resilience, technological advantage and strategic autonomy.
The purpose of this article is to present and analyze the concept of value chains as strategic models of long-term development and ensuring efficiency from a sustainable perspective. According to the authors, a detailed analysis of value chains may enable defining strategic directions of action and identifying the risks of their disruption or interruption. To give a practical dimension to the presented analyses, the example of the cobalt value chain is provided and the determinants of its functioning on the current market along with development prospects are indicated.