Tellurium is a classic byproduct critical mineral: its supply responds first to copper refinery throughput, not to tellurium price. USGS MCS 2025 says more than 90% of historical tellurium supply has come from copper anode slimes, and the 2024 refinery table shows a market dominated by China at about three-quarters of global refined output. The United States recovered copper telluride at two electrolytic copper refineries in Texas and Utah, but did not refine tellurium domestically; that intermediate was exported for further processing while downstream firms imported refined tellurium, compounds, and dioxide.

Demand is concentrated even more tightly than supply. USGS estimates that 60% of 2024 global tellurium consumption went into cadmium telluride solar cells, with thermoelectric devices another 20% and metallurgy 15%. That makes tellurium strategically important not because of large tonnage, but because a single energy-transition use now anchors the market while output still depends on copper-refining residues and a small number of specialist recovery circuits.

Commercially, the market split in 2024 between a well-supplied North American warehouse market and a tighter European market facing higher costs to source material from China. The U.S. annual average price fell 5% to $75/kg, while the European average rose 4% to $80/kg. At the same time, First Solar expanded domestic CdTe module manufacturing, underscoring the central tellurium reality: refined availability can stay tight even when end-use growth is strong, because the element is chained to upstream copper and other host-metal flows.