The name "bauxite" comes from the southern France village of Les Bauxs where it was discovered in 1821. The term bauxite actually refers to any ore or mixture of minerals that is rich in the oxide that is formed from aluminous rocks. Most bauxite contains about 40-60% alumina. Deposits are found all over the world, from Spain through Southern France, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Greece, (providing the base for the European aluminum industry), with even larger deposits in subtropical and tropical regions of Africa, West Indies, South America and Australia. Bauxite is refined first into aluminium oxide trihydrate (alumina) and they electrolytically reduced into metallic aluminum. It takes two to three tones of bauxite to produce one ton of alumina and two tones of alumina to produce one ton of aluminum metal.

Aluminium is still a rather "young" metal, in that it has only been produced for commercial purposes for about 146 years. Other metals, such as copper, lead, and tin have been exploited by humankind throughout history for thousands of years. However, more aluminum is produced today than all other non-ferrous metals put together. To put into comparison, in the year of 1999, 31 million tones of aluminum was commercially produced globally. That same year there was 14.1 million tones of cooper, 6.0 million tones of lead and only 0.2 million tones of tin produced.