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Asia Mining

China’s Grip on Africa’s Minerals Sparks a US Response – by Matthew Hill (Bloomberg News – November 2, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The US is going full steam ahead in its effort to catch up with China in a part of the world that’s become central to the green transition: Africa’s “Copperbelt.” Loaded with minerals critical to the production of batteries and other renewable energy components, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have become the latest venue in the struggle for advantage between Washington and Beijing.

As part of its stated ambition to challenge China’s dominance, the Biden administration saw an opportunity to revitalize a century-old rail line linking key African mines to an Atlantic Ocean port. Called the Lobito corridor, the US is investing hundreds of millions of dollars on the project.

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Macron is shopping for uranium in Kazakhstan after the loss of Niger – by Jan van der Made (RFI France – November 1, 2023)

https://www.rfi.fr/en/

Oil-rich Kazakhstan has already emerged as a replacement supplier of crude to European nations turning off Russian supply and an important link in the new China-Europe trade route bypassing Russia. At a meeting with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Macron complimented Astana for refusing to side with Moscow on Ukraine and said the two countries planned to sign significant business deals.

“We will be able to make progress on important international matters, underscore our commitment to the United Nations charter and principles such as territorial integrity and national sovereignty,” he said through an interpreter. But Kazakhstan mainly attracted Macron’s attention because of its vast uranium resources.

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How Palanpuri Jains captured global diamond trade (Economic Times – April 4, 2023)

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/

In Belgium’s Antwerp, the diamond capital of the world, a diamond trader is most likely to be from one particular religion and one particular village in India. The Jain community is known for its excellence in business and trade not only in India but in many other countries too, most popularly in Belgium where they trade in diamonds.

In little more than half a century, a small Jain community, the Palanpuri Jains, so called because they come from Palanpur town in Banaskantha district of Gujarat, has got a hold on diamond trade in Antwerp. On Mahavir Jayanti today, here’s the story of a community which is known to have attained business excellence due to their ascetic religion that puts great emphasis on ethical behaviour.

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Wyloo, Chalice, BHP sound alarm over Biden’s Jakarta nickel deal – Brad Thompson (Australian Financail Review – October 30, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Some of Australia’s largest nickel producers are increasingly concerned that the Biden administration will allow their big Indonesian rivals access to incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act – a huge subsidy to encourage the transition to clean energy – as early as next month.

Luca Giacovazzi, the chief executive of the Forrest family’s Wyloo Metals, has warned that any agreement that made Indonesian nickel companies eligible for the funding package would make it hard to justify investment in Australia and Canada because of the higher costs of production.

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Five years after Canada banned asbestos, industry clings on in India despite health concerns – by James Griffiths (Globe and Mail – October 30, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Sitting inside his house in central New Delhi, Raja Singh leafs through folders packed with petitions, freedom-of-information requests and hard-won data from hospitals and local governments across India. Dr. Singh is one of a number of researchers and activists who have spent years trying to prove something long accepted in most of the world: Asbestos is a danger to public health.

“There’s a lot of talk that there is no mesothelioma in India,” Dr. Singh told The Globe and Mail, referring to a type of cancer almost always caused by asbestos. “But I’ve gone and looked at each and every record available, and there are cases even in pretty small registries.”

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Race to break China’s lithium stranglehold heats up – by Michael Smith (Australian Financial Review – October 30, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

China’s dominance of the EV supply chain has raised global fears of a new trade war, as tensions between Beijing and Washington intensify over critical minerals.

Rows of multicoloured electric vehicles built by China’s BYD are the star attraction in Singapore’s Suntec City shopping mall. The glitzy showroom featuring discounted “Surf Blue” or “Parkour Red” Atto 3 model cars is often packed with customers – a reminder of China’s dominance of the electric vehicle market in Asia, and increasingly the world.

Further upstream, national champion CATL has quickly become the global leader in battery-making for EVs, powering one in three on the road worldwide today. The company and Shenzhen-based BYD have raced ahead of rivals in South Korea and Japan, leaving the US and Europe contemplating how to stoke an electric car industry without relying on China for the most important and costly piece of the puzzle.

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Indonesia’s high-grade nickel ore reserves may be depleted in 6 years – by Polina Devitt and Fransiska Nangoy (Reuters – October 27, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON/JAKARTA, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Reserves of high-grade nickel ore in top producer Indonesia may be depleted in around six years, a miners’ association has warned, risking shortages of the material used to make stainless steel.

Indonesia’s high-grade 1.7% nickel ore is mainly used for the country’s nickel pig iron (NPI) production, a feedstock for stainless steel, while lower grade is used to make products for the electric vehicles batteries.

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Brazzaville Summit of the Three Basins needs to find ways to protect world’s tropical forests – by Vibha Varshney (Down To Earth.org – October 25, 2023)

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/

Tropical forests face threat from fossil fuel, mining and extractive industry expansion

As delegates of the Summit of the Three Basins congregate in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo to strengthen South-South governance for three ecosystems — Amazon, Congo, Borneo-Mekong and Southeast Asia — a global report showed that large parts of tropical forests in these areas remain threatened by fossil fuel, mining and extractive industry expansion.

The Three Basins Threat Report: Fossil Fuel, Mining, and Industrial Expansion Threats to Forests and Communities put together by the research and advocacy group Earth Insight and other non-profits, documents the challenges that the world’s remaining tropical forest basins face.

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China ups critical minerals heat with graphite controls – by Andy Home (Reuters – October 24, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) – China is upping the critical minerals stakes by curbing exports of graphite, a key raw material in electric vehicle batteries. The West can’t say it wasn’t warned.

When China announced restrictions on exports of gallium and germanium in July, former Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo was quoted in the China Daily as saying it was “just the start” if the West continued to target China’s high-technology sector.

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‘What’s the point of a boat if there are no fish?’ – by Hellena Souisa (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – October 21, 2023)

https://www.abc.net.au/

“The company” — a sprawling nickel industrial area better known as the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP) — is a site of national strategic importance to Indonesia and one of the first minerals processing mega-developments that has enabled the country to emerge as the biggest refiner of nickel in the world.

Built with billions of dollars of mostly Chinese money over the last decade, IMIP in Central Sulawesi now spans more than 20 square kilometres with infrastructure including an airport, seaport, and worker accommodation that supports 52 enterprises. IMIP primarily processes nickel ore for stainless steel but now is increasingly producing higher-grade nickel for electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

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How China Left the World Far Behind in the Battery Race – by Akshat Rathi (Bloomberg News – October 12, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — This is one of the stories in Akshat Rathi’s new book Climate Capitalism, which is out today. Akshat explains the origin of China’s dominance in the battery market through the lens of CATL, now the world’s largest battery company. This is an adapted excerpt from the book.

It was an admission of defeat. But you would never know it looking at the mild-mannered smiles that morning. Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, was standing next to Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. On a partially cloudy summer morning in Berlin in July 2018, both leaders made small talk in between posing for the cameras.

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China’s Tsingshan Gets Access to Chilean Lithium in Battery Metal Race – by James Attwood (Bloomberg News – October 16, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — China’s latest investments in South America’s lithium triangle show the challenges for US efforts to counter the dominance of the world’s second-largest economy in key parts of battery metal supply chains.

On Monday, Chile unveiled a deal that gives Tsingshan Holding Group preferential lithium prices for a project to make value-added products in the South American nation. It was announced as part of President Gabriel Boric’s trip to China, where he met with Xiang Guangda, the metal group’s billionaire owner.

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Lithium-hungry France strikes Mongolian exploration deal (Reuters – October 12, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) – France signed a deal with Mongolia to search for lithium on Thursday and moved a step closer to mine uranium in the Asian country, as Paris steps up its hunt for critical metals needed for its clean energy shift.

The deals are one of the highlights of Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh’s visit to Paris, which comes less than six months after President Emmanuel Macron stopped off in Ulaanbaatar on his way back from a G7 summit in Japan.

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Chinese miners to be hardest hit by global coal job cuts, study finds – by You Xiaoying (Nikkei Asia – October 12, 2023)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

Shift to renewables is forecast to slash nearly 250,000 jobs in Shanxi by 2050

Chinese miners will likely be hardest hit by sweeping job cuts expected in the coal industry over the next three decades as countries shutter coal plants in favor of cleaner — and increasingly cheaper — renewable energy, a new analysis has found.

Coal mines in Shanxi province in northwest China, the country’s coal heartland, could slash 241,900 jobs by 2050, according to a report published on Tuesday by Global Energy Monitor (GEM), a San Francisco-based nongovernmental organization.

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BHP braces for Indonesian supply surge as nickel hits two-year low – by Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – October 5, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

BHP says electric vehicle manufacturers are not yet willing to pay a “green premium” to recognise the sustainability credentials of nickel mined in Australia, at a time when surprisingly large volumes of Indonesian nickel have dragged down prices for the metal to a two-year low.

BHP’s chief development officer Johan van Jaarsveld said the company would maintain a policy of only investing in the sort of “sulphide” nickel geology that occurs in Australia and Canada, but was bracing for more nickel supply growth from Indonesian miners working in “laterite” geology.

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