https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Plummeting prices for metals such as lithium and nickel are dashing Canada’s dream of becoming a global juggernaut for critical minerals, with a market capitulation making it even more challenging to raise the money needed to build new mines.
The situation is growing so dire that some miners have started calling for heavy-handed government intervention, including the possibility of Ottawa directly funding new projects, because they worry that Canada will lose the race to produce these minerals to rivals such as China for good.
As it stands, Canada is well-situated for the critical minerals revolution, overtaking China this week as the global leader in BloombergNEF’s global lithium-ion battery supply chain ranking. The annual study rates 30 countries using variables such as volume of raw materials, the capability to produce batteries and the quality of supporting sectors.
Yet having raw materials in the ground is very different from producing them – and Canada is struggling to do the latter. New mines usually take more than a decade to build and require billions of dollars of upfront capital investment – a large portion of which historically came from retail investors.
For the rest of this article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-critical-minerals-prices-junior-miners/