(Kitco News) Gold dropped more than $40 in the aftermath of better-than-expected U.S. retail sales on Thursday. And analysts are now saying that prices are in “no man’s land” as U.S. economic outlook shifts ahead of the Federal Reserve interest rate announcement.
The U.S. retail sales numbers beat expectations in August, rising 0.7% following a drop of 1.8% in July. Market consensus calls were projecting to see a drop of 0.8%.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Ardiden sells controlling stake in three lithium projects to Green Technology Metals
A new Australian lithium exploration company wants to tap into the global clean energy movement, starting in northwestern Ontario.
Shareholders for Ardiden, a gold exploration company operating in the Pickle Lake area, have agreed to sell up to 80 per cent ownership of its lithium projects in the region to Green Technology Metals, formerly known as Great Northern Lithium Pty.
New registrations of global passenger electric vehicles (EVs) surged by 109% year-on-year during the first six months of 2021, Adamas Intelligence has found in a new report.
In its report entitled ‘State of Charge: EVs, Batteries and Battery Materials’, Adamas analysts found 4.16 million new units were registered versus 1.99 million units in the first half of 2020.
Redwood Materials Inc., the battery recycling company created by Tesla Inc. co-founder J.B. Straubel, has been keeping a big secret: It isn’t really a recycling company.
Sure, Redwood has risen quickly to become the biggest lithium-ion battery recycler in the U.S.. But Straubel didn’t leave Tesla in 2019 just to clean out America’s junk drawers. His broader goal, described to Bloomberg for the first time, is to move a huge chunk of the battery-component industry from Asia to the U.S.
The Narwhal
As the federal election looms, leaders of all political stripes are promising to increase the zero-emission transportation sector through incentives and investments as a key tool to tackle the climate crisis. But there’s a catch.
Positioning Canada as a leader in electrifying the transportation sector also means increasing mineral extraction to fuel that growth. Batteries that propel electric vehicles are powered by minerals like lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel.
China has ordered its companies that broke laws and environmental standards in the Democratic Republic of Congo to cease operating and leave the country – at a time when the African nation’s government is aiming to renegotiate “infrastructure for minerals” deals with Beijing.
It came after South Kivu province suspended six Chinese firms’ operations over illegal mining and destruction of the environment. The companies had missed a deadline to register their activities with the Congolese authorities.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
With reserves dwindling at its existing operations, Glencore has staked $1.3 billion on a new mine that will reach more than two kilometres — picture four CN Towers — below the surface.
“We’ve been mining around Sudbury for a long time now,” vice-president Peter Xavier told a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce audience Thursday, as keynote speaker for the group’s AGM. “That means a lot of near-to-surface, easy-to-find deposits are long gone, so the future is very much at depth.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Teck Resources Ltd. has held talks with Lundin Mining Corp. and Glencore PLC as the Vancouver mining company continues to weigh its options for unloading its highly profitable but out-of-favour coal business.
Mining industry sources said that Teck chief executive officer Don Lindsay held deal talks with Toronto-based copper miner Lundin and Glencore, the Swiss mining and commodities trading giant, in the past year or so, but discussions with both companies ultimately went nowhere.
(Bloomberg) — The Canadian firm behind the world’s only physical uranium fund said hedge funds and family offices are driving up demand for the radioactive metal used to fuel nuclear reactors.
The Sprott Physical Uranium Trust has itself been on a buying spree, bolstering its stockpile by 45% in four weeks after snapping up 8.1 million pounds of the commodity as prices surged.
(Reuters) – U.S. mining companies are blasting proposals in Congress that would set royalties for copper, lithium and other minerals extracted from federal land, with executives saying the measures would hurt domestic production of the building blocks for solar panels, electric vehicles and other green technologies.
The House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee added language to the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation spending measure last week that would set an 8% gross royalty on existing mines and 4% on new ones. There would also be a 7 cent fee for every ton of rock moved.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Agnico Eagle wants to build a gold and copper mine north of Larder Lake, near the Quebec border, and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada is inviting public feedback.
The agency said it has accepted the initial project description for the Upper Beaver Gold Project and wants the public and Indigenous groups to review the project description and provide comment. The agency will compile a summary of issues to present to the mining company.
(Bloomberg) — A number of gold deals have been announced in recent years during the annual industry gathering in Denver, including 2018’s takeover of Randgold Resources. This year, the buzz is focused on consolidation potential among mid-tier producers, according to one precious-metals veteran.
“There was a lot of gossip around the bar last night about what might be announced this morning,” said David Garofalo, who ran Goldcorp before it was gobbled up by Newmont Corp. and now heads Gold Royalty Corp. “That’s been the custom here.”
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The imposition of a tax on the export of chrome ore would be high risk and the gain from such an intervention would likely be eroded fairly quickly by the high cost of electricity, which is the real problem.
Chrome SA’s Alistair McAdam and Paul Anderson of Genesis Analytics highlighted this summary when they spoke to Mining Weekly in a Zoom interview on Monday. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)
TAIPEI — Electronic hardware manufacturers are sweating as prices for rare-earth metals surge amid soaring demand and simmering tensions between the U.S. and China, the world’s most important source of these vital materials.
For Max Hsiao, senior manager of an audio component maker based in Dongguan, China, the squeeze is coming from a magnetic alloy known as praseodymium neodymium. The price of the metal, which Hsiao’s company uses to assemble speakers for Amazon and laptop maker Lenovo, has doubled since June last year to around 760,000 yuan ($117,300) a ton this August.
nce or twice a generation, Americans rediscover Appalachia. Sometimes, they come to it through caricature – the cartoon strip Li’l Abner or the child beauty pageant star Honey Boo Boo or, more recently, Buckwild, a reality show about West Virginia teenagers, which MTV broadcast with subtitles. Occasionally, the encounter is more compassionate.
In 1962, the social critic Michael Harrington published The Other America, which called attention to what he described as a “vicious circle of poverty” that “twists and deforms the spirit”.
Around the turn of this century, hedge funds in New York and its environs took a growing interest in coalmines. Coal never had huge appeal to Wall Street investors – mines were dirty, old-fashioned and bound up by union contracts that made them difficult to buy and sell.
