Magna Mining makes a bold $33-million move in Sudbury – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 12, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Sudbury mine developer will put its local knowledge to the test in asset deal with KGHM

Magna Mining, a fast-moving Sudbury mining startup company, has taken a giant leap forward by acquiring a working copper mine in the Sudbury basin along with a raft of promising properties from Polish-headquartered miner KGHM International.

Magna, known locally for its redevelopment of the former Crean Hill mine, has signed an agreement to acquire the operating McCreedy West copper mine and a stable for exploration and development properties across the Sudbury basin in a $33.3-million cash-and-share deal.

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Port Radium and the atomic highway – John Sandlos (Canadian Mining Journal – September 11, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Gilbert LaBine is one of the most celebrated heroes in Canada’s mining history. He began his career prospecting around Cobalt, the Porcupine and Kirkland Lake, but his success was limited. Everything changed, however, when LaBine found pitchblende near Great Bear Lake in 1930, a discovery that cemented his legend as a plucky explorer, willing to brave the harshest northern environments to strike paydirt.

LaBine created a company, Eldorado Mines, to develop extremely valuable radium mines at Cameron Bay (later re-named Port Radium). This first mining development in the Northwest Territories (NWT) created a huge amount of excitement within the government and the industry about the potential of mining north of the sixtieth parallel.

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Gold price hits new high as momentum builds for Fed rate cut – by Staff (Mining.com – September 12, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Gold prices hit a new record on Thursday after the latest set of US inflation and unemployment figures helped bolster the the chances of a Federal Reserve cut next week. Spot gold climbed 1.6% to a new all-time high of $2,554.78 per ounce, before falling to below $2,500 as of noon ET. Three-month US gold futures were 1.5% higher at $2,580.40 per ounce.

While the producer price index for August was higher than economist forecast, rising 0.2% instead of 0.1% over the previous month, the over the overall trend remained consistent with subsiding inflation.

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Lithium World Asks If Surprise Mine Shutdown Can Arrest Slump (Bloomberg News – September 12, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — An unexpected shutdown at one of China’s biggest lithium mines has left the industry scrambling to judge if the move will be enough to end the battery material’s prolonged price slump.

The share prices of lithium miners from Australia to South America spiked Wednesday after reports that Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s biggest battery producer, was suspending a mine that accounts for about 5% to 6% of global supply. Citigroup Inc. boosted its price forecasts, while Chinese futures for the metal surged.

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Diamond finds could extend NWT’s Misery mine ‘well past 2026,’ Burgundy says – by Blair McBride (Northern Miner – September 10, 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Results from summer drilling at Burgundy Diamond’s (ASX: BDM) Ekati mine in the Northwest Territories could help extend production at the underground Misery mine much longer than expected, the company says.

Out of 710 metres drilled across six holes in July, the crew found a fancy yellow diamond about 25 metres below the last planned mine level. Drilling that targeted Misery’s main ore body confirmed the company’s belief that there’s a larger body at depth.

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Indigenous Group Takes Fight Against Rio Tinto Arizona Copper Mine to US Supreme Court – by Ernest Scheyder (U.S. News/Reuters – September 11, 2024)

https://www.usnews.com/

Apache Stronghold, a nonprofit group comprised of Arizona’s San Carlos Apache tribe and conservationists, asked the court to overturn a March ruling from a sharply divided San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowing the federal government to swap acreage with the mining companies for their Resolution Copper project.

The appeal to the nine justices was delivered in person by a courier after the Apache held a ceremony of prayer and dancing on the court’s steps in Washington, the culmination of a months-long caravan from their Arizona reservation to the capital.

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Mining the Northwest: Red Lake’s Great Bear project could be a beast of a mine – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 11, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Kinross Gold paints an open pit and underground mining picture worthy of 500,000 ounces a year

Once the Great Bear project gets rocking and rolling in 2029, Kinross Gold projects its future Red Lake mine can be a 500,000-ounce-a-year producer.

The Toronto gold company released a preliminary economic study (PEA) on Sept. 10 of Great Bear showing a 12-year operating life that will churn out 5.3 million ounces of gold over that span. In the PEA, Kinross paints a picture of mining high-grade material via open pit and underground methods, concurrently.

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Opinion: Now is a good time to add commodity exposure to your portfolio – by Bhawana Chhabra (Globe and Mail – September 12, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The outlook for commodity markets may be brighter than many investors appreciate, given recent price action and the current state of the global economy. Recession risk is on the rise, to be sure, but for those with longer-term horizons who can look through near-term volatility, our models at Rosenberg Research are saying that now is a good time to add exposure.

From cyclical tailwinds such as a weaker U.S. dollar to depressed investor sentiment and positioning (which are contrarian positives) and structural demand-supply imbalances, there are good conditions for commodities over the medium term.

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China Nickel Tycoon Seeks Growth in US Energy-Storage Market – by Jacob Gu (Bloomberg News – September 10, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Chinese billionaire Xiang Guangda’s battery company is hunting for more US investment opportunities despite mounting geopolitical tension between the world’s economic juggernauts. REPT BATTERO Energy Co., a unit of Xiang’s Tsingshan Holding Group Co., this week opened an office in California, marking its first US outpost.

REPT “is surely giving full respect to the world’s second largest energy storage market,” Chairman Hui Cao said during an interview. Although a specific target hasn’t yet been set, the aim is for the US to “contribute more than 10%” to REPT’s revenue.

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Fulcrum Metals wants to turn Kirkland Lake tailings into treasure – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 10, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

The UK-based exploration company sees multi-billion-dollar opportunity to extract gold, clean up mining legacy sites

Gold-enriched tailings piles left behind by two historic mining operations outside Kirkland Lake has attracted a United Kingdom-based company promoting the idea of sustainable mining.

Fulcrum Metals wants to dive into the tailings piles of the historic Teck-Hughes and Sylvanite mines to extract gold contained in the granular waste piles on the surface and eventually remediate the sites.

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Vale Aims to Boost Iron Ore Output Despite Weakening Prices – by Vanessa Dezem (Bloomberg News – September 11, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Vale SA said it will produce more iron ore this year than previously expected, even with prices trading near two-year lows as China’s steel slowdown weighs on the global market.

The world’s No. 2 iron ore supplier said in a Wednesday presentation to investors that it expects to produce 323 million to 330 million metric tons of the steelmaking ingredient this year, compared with a prior forecast of 310 million to 320 million tons.

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AngloGold Ashanti to buy Centamin for $2.5 billion – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 10, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

AngloGold Ashanti (JSE: ANG) (NYSE: AU) (ASX: AGG) is buying Egypt-focused smaller rival Centamin (LON: CEY) in a $2.5 billion (£1.9 billion) stock and cash deal that would see the South African gold miner become the world’s fourth largest producer of the precious metal.

The acquisition hands AngloGold the key Sukari mine in Egypt, which is the country’s largest and first modern gold operation, as well as one of the world’s largest producing mines.

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World’s largest uranium miner warns Ukraine war makes it harder to supply west – by Harry Dempsey and Anastasia Stognei (Financial Times – September 10, 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Pull towards Russia and China grows stronger, says boss of Kazatomprom

Kazatomprom’s chief executive has warned that Russia’s war on Ukraine is making it harder for the world’s largest uranium producer to keep supplying the west as the gravitational pull towards Moscow and Beijing grows stronger.

Meirzhan Yussupov, chief of the Kazakh state miner, said sanctions caused by the war had created obstacles to supplying western utilities. Kazakhstan produces 43 per cent of the world’s uranium, equivalent to the market share that the Opec cartel has over oil.

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Goldman has a stock model that’s challenging ESG assumptions – by Frances Schwartzkopff (Bloomberg News – September 10, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

At Goldman Sachs Group Inc., there’s an ESG filter that tells investors to buy coal giant Glencore Plc, and avoid Big Tech staples Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.

The filter is designed to pick stocks based on how much attention companies pay to recycling, waste management and the re-use of materials and products. The better they do, the higher they score on a metric called circularity. The approach, the latest example of the huge portfolio variations that investors face depending on the ESG screen they use, has shown it can beat the wider market over time, according to Goldman.

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Love him or hate him, an economy under Trump should fare better than under Harris – by David Rosenberg (Globe and Mail – September 10, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Mark Twain, if he were alive today, would likely update his famous refrain to “Lies, damned lies, statistics and politics.” I want to state emphatically that I am not “political,” and this is not one iota an attempt to be “political”.

Being a Canadian resident and citizen, I am not even eligible to vote on November 5th . When I penned something critical of the Democrats a couple of months ago, I received my fair share of hate mail and had some subscribers threaten to cancel their subscription with me. The problem is that politics, markets, and economics are all intertwined, and everything I write is aimed at being analytical rather than judgmental.

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