Click here for the entire series about copper: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/24/Travels-with-Copper/
That would be Vancouver’s mining district, where BC’s future is low-grade and high-risk. Second in a series.
VANCOUVER, B.C. — British Columbia copper ends up in smartphones, in the cars we drive, in our plumbing and electrical systems, as well as in our scrap yards and landfills. But to understand how it gets there, you need to visit a nondescript office tower on Pender Street in Vancouver’s financial district. Or perhaps more aptly put, Vancouver’s mining district.
If mining capital were mineral ore, Vancouver would be the mother lode of all mother lodes. More publicly-traded mining companies are headquartered here (and in Toronto) than anywhere else on earth: 60 per cent of all mining corporations on the planet are found in Canada. Their collective market value in 2012 approached half a trillion dollars: an estimated $449 billion. (See sidebar.)
Many in the mining industry view this global cluster as proof that we are the unrivalled masters of mining on the planet. This has some basis, but the reality is a lot more complex.
“The single largest reason for the concentration of head offices here,” says Alan Young, former executive director of the watchdog group Environmental Mining Council of B.C., “is that stock exchanges like the TSX Venture Exchange or TSX [Toronto Stock Exchange] have been developed to promote venture capital that mid-level and small exploration companies require to exist.” (The Toronto Stock Exchange lists larger, more established companies; the TSX Venture, in fact based in Calgary, is for smaller, higher-risk resource companies looking to raise money.)
In 2012, 70 per cent of all the money raised in the world by senior and junior mining companies was transacted through these two exchanges — nearly $11 billion. That essential financing activity has spawned a critical mass of investors, analysts, technical experts, promoters and other associated human infrastructure in Vancouver and Toronto. (Among them the three mining analysts who joined me on my visit to Copper Mountain.
“The result has been the birth of global mining finance centres that are largely self-perpetuating,” says Young.
Outpost of empire
High above Pender Street, I am ushered into a tiny, undecorated boardroom, where Hiroyuki Tarumi, general manager of Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Materials Corporation’s Vancouver office, awaits. He is a squat, powerfully-built man with a resonating baritone voice like Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek. His posting to Vancouver is just the latest of many, including stints in Tokyo, Manhattan, and Pretoria, South Africa.
The modesty of both this office and Tarumi is misleading: this is an outpost of empire. Mitsubishi Materials Corporation’s net sales last year alone exceeded US$17 billion. Much of that came thanks to its control of numerous links along the global copper value chain that stretches from hard-rock mines in places like Copper Mountain, to the production of cars, high speed rail lines and smartphones.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://thetyee.ca/News/2014/03/25/Copper-Casino-Bet/?utm_campaign=map