Raw material in the context of "Intermediate good"

Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high-tech, but it is most commonly applied to industrial design, in which raw materials from the primary sector are transformed into finished goods on a large scale. Such goods may be sold to other manufacturers for the production of other more complex products (such as aircraft, household appliances, furniture, sports equipment or automobiles), or distributed via the tertiary industry to end users and consumers (usually through wholesalers, who in turn sell to retailers, who then sell them to individual customers).

Manufacturing engineering is the field of engineering that designs and optimizes the manufacturing process, or the steps through which raw materials are transformed into a final product. The manufacturing process begins with product design, and materials specification. These materials are then modified through manufacturing to become the desired product.

The exploitation of natural resources describes using natural resources, often non-renewable or limited, for economic growth or development. Environmental degradation, human insecurity, and social conflict frequently accompany natural resource exploitation. The impacts of the depletion of natural resources include the decline of economic growth in local areas; however, the abundance of natural resources does not always correlate with a country's material prosperity. Many resource-rich countries, especially in the Global South, face distributional conflicts, where local bureaucracies mismanage or disagree on how resources should be used. Foreign industries also contribute to resource exploitation, where raw materials are outsourced from developing countries, with the local communities receiving little profit from the exchange. This is often accompanied by negative effects of economic growth around the affected areas such as inequality and pollution.

The exploitation of natural resources started to emerge on an industrial scale in the 19th century as the extraction and processing of raw materials (such as in mining, steam power, and machinery) expanded much further than it had in pre-industrial areas. During the 20th century, energy consumption rapidly increased. As of 2012, about 78.3% of the world's energy consumption is sustained by the extraction of fossil fuels, which consists of oil, coal and natural gas.

In microeconomics, an industry is a branch of an economy that produces a closely related set of raw materials, goods, or services. For example, one might refer to the wood industry or to the insurance industry.

When evaluating a single group or company, its dominant source of revenue is typically used by industry classifications to classify it within a specific industry. For example the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) – used directly or through derived classifications for the official statistics of most countries worldwide – classifies "statistical units" by the "economic activity in which they mainly engage". Industry is then defined as "set of statistical units that are classified into the same ISIC category". However, a single business need not belong just to one industry, such as when a large business (often referred to as a conglomerate) diversifies across separate industries.

In economics, factors of production, resources, or inputs are what is used in the production process to produce output—that is, goods and services. The utilised amounts of the various inputs determine the quantity of output according to the relationship called the production function. There are four basic resources or factors of production: land, labour, capital and entrepreneur (or enterprise). The factors are also frequently labeled "producer goods or services" to distinguish them from the goods or services purchased by consumers, which are frequently labeled "consumer goods".

There are two types of factors: primary and secondary. The previously mentioned primary factors are land, labour and capital. Materials and energy are considered secondary factors in classical economics because they are obtained from land, labour, and capital. The primary factors facilitate production but neither become part of the product (as with raw materials) nor become significantly transformed by the production process (as with fuel used to power machinery). Land includes not only the site of production but also natural resources above or below the soil. Recent usage has distinguished human capital (the stock of knowledge in the labor force) from labour. Entrepreneurship is also sometimes considered a factor of production. Sometimes the overall state of technology is described as a factor of production. The number and definition of factors vary, depending on theoretical purpose, empirical emphasis, or school of economics.

Commerce is the organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered exchange of goods, services, and other things of value—predominantly through transactional processes—at the right time, place, quantity, quality and price through various channels among the original producers and the final consumers within local, regional, national or international economies. The diversity in the distribution of natural resources, differences of human needs and wants, and division of labour along with comparative advantage are the principal factors that give rise to commercial exchanges.

Commerce consists of trade and aids to trade (i.e. auxiliary commercial services) taking place along the entire supply chain. Trade is the exchange of goods (including raw materials, intermediate and finished goods) and services between buyers and sellers in return for an agreed-upon price at traditional (or online) marketplaces. It is categorized into domestic trade, including retail and wholesale as well as local, regional, inter-regional and international/foreign trade (encompassing import, export and entrepôt/re-export trades). The exchange of currencies (in foreign exchange markets), commodities (in commodity markets/exchanges) and securities and derivatives (in stock exchanges and financial markets) in specialized exchange markets, typically operating under the domain of finance and investment, also falls under the umbrella of trade. On the other hand, auxiliary commercial activities (aids to trade) which can facilitate trade include commercial intermediaries, banking, credit financing and related services, transportation, packaging, warehousing, communication, advertising and insurance. Their purpose is to remove hindrances related to direct personal contact, payments, savings, funding, separation of place and time, product protection and preservation, knowledge and risk.

A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geological origin or biological function. Materials science is the study of materials, their properties, and their applications.

Raw materials can be processed in different ways to influence their properties, by purification, shaping or the introduction of other materials. New materials can be produced from raw materials by synthesis.

Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. The ore must be a rock or mineral that contains a valuable constituent, can be extracted or mined and sold for profit. Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water.

Modern mining processes involve prospecting for ore bodies, analysis of the profit potential of a proposed mine, extraction of the desired materials, and final reclamation or restoration of the land after the mine is closed. Mining materials are often obtained from ore bodies, lodes, veins, seams, reefs, or placer deposits. The exploitation of these deposits for raw materials is dependent on investment, labor, energy, refining, and transportation cost.

Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in advance of the manufacture or production of the product. Industrial manufacture consists of predetermined, standardized and repeated, often automated, acts of replication, while craft-based design is a process or approach in which the form of the product is determined personally by the product's creator largely concurrent with the act of its production.

All manufactured products are the result of a design process, but the nature of this process can vary. It can be conducted by an individual or a team, and such a team could include people with varied expertise (e.g. designers, engineers, business experts, etc.). It can emphasize intuitive creativity or calculated scientific decision-making, and often emphasizes a mix of both. It can be influenced by factors as varied as materials, production processes, business strategy, and prevailing social, commercial, or aesthetic attitudes. Industrial design, as an applied art, most often focuses on a combination of aesthetics and user-focused considerations, but also often provides solutions for problems of form, function, physical ergonomics, marketing, brand development, sustainability, and sales.

Mining in Japan is minimal because Japan does not possess many on-shore mineral resources. Many of the on-shore minerals have already been mined to the point that it has become less expensive to import minerals. There are small deposits of coal, oil, iron and minerals in the Japanese archipelago. Japan is scarce in critical natural resources and has been heavily dependent on imported energy and raw materials. There are major deep sea mineral resources in the seabed of Japan. This is not mined yet due to technological obstacles for deep sea mining.

In 2019, Japan was the 2nd largest world producer of iodine, 4th largest worldwide producer of bismuth, the world's 9th largest producer of sulfur and the 10th largest producer of gypsum.

In economics, the secondary sector is the economic sector which comprises manufacturing, encompassing industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in construction.

This sector generally takes the output of the primary sector (i.e. raw materials like metals, wood) and creates finished goods suitable for sale to domestic businesses or consumers and for export (via distribution through the tertiary sector). Many of these industries consume large quantities of energy, require factories and use machinery; they are often classified as light or heavy based on such quantities. This also produces waste materials and waste heat that may cause environmental problems or pollution (see negative externalities). Examples include textile production, car manufacturing, and handicraft.