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Australia/New Caledonia/Papua New Guinea Mining

This billionaire used Indonesia’s nickel to squeeze out Australia – by Emma Connors (Australian Financial Review – January 9, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

Indonesia’s ban on unrefined ore exports is loathed by competing producers and in breach of trade rules, but it is popular at home where international investors have built massive production centres.

They call him the Nickel King. Xiang Guangda, founder and chairman of Chinese giant Tsingshan Holdings, has invested billions of dollars in nickel processing in Indonesia, boosting exports and making it harder for higher-cost Australian miners to compete.

Indonesia’s exports of ferro nickel alloy, which is used to make stainless steel, climbed 38 per cent by volume in the first five months of last year after notching up a 42 per cent increase in the previous two years.

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Struggling nickel sector ‘disappointed’ by critical minerals snub – by Peter Ker and Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – December 18, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

The boss of Andrew Forrest’s private mining company says nickel’s omission from Australia’s expanded critical minerals list is “disappointing” at a time when weak prices for the battery metal are endangering “hundreds” of Australian mining jobs.

Wyloo Resources boss Luca Giacovazzi issued the warning on the same day the federal department of industry warned of more “downward pressure” on nickel prices in 2024 because Indonesian miners were poised to oversupply nickel markets for years to come.

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Gina Rinehart looks to life beyond the rivers of cash from iron ore – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – December 14, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

The mining magnate, crowned The Australian Financial Review Business Person of the Year, is recognised for her preparedness to take big bets and the role she’s played in shaping Australia’s economy.

Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott is an unabashed fan of billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart and her achievements in business and contributions to philanthropic and community causes. Rinehart, says Scott, is “the driving force behind one of Australia’s largest and most successful private companies, which has created thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of value to the community”.

He adds: “She is ambitious for Australia and our key export industries and is investing to make a difference. “Many people would not appreciate the extent and generosity of Gina’s philanthropic and community support, but it is substantial, and her support of many of our Olympic athletes is remarkable.”

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BHP issues dire warning on nickel mines – by Brad Thompson and Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – December 15, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

The overhaul of the Albanese government’s critical minerals strategy offers no relief to the besieged nickel industry, which faces further job losses at BHP-owned mines.

BHP said its Nickel West business was not immune to the challenges suffocating the sector where some mines have shut down, and fellow producer Panoramic Resources was tipped into administration this week. Nickel West asset president Jessica Farrell said uncertainty had swept through the Australian nickel industry.

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Mining tycoons battle over lithium’s ‘corridor of power’ in Australia – by Nic Fildes and Harry Dempsey (Financial Times – November 26, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

Local billionaires disrupt consolidation as industry positions itself for boom in mineral vital to electric cars

The vast tracts of desert in Western Australia, which have yielded gold, nickel and iron ore to prospectors in decades past, have now become a major battleground for miners of lithium, a key raw material for batteries as the world transitions to greener energy.

A struggle for control of the resource has been ignited this year as multinational companies have clashed with Australian mining billionaires over a series of takeover attempts in two of the remotest parts of the state.

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The Australian wave – by Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco (CIM Magazine – November 20, 2023)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

Canada’s rich mineral deposits and generous critical minerals incentives are attracting Australia-based companies, fostering collaboration between the two nations to secure a reliable supply of commodities needed for the energy transition

Over the last five years, Australian mining companies have been flocking to Canada. Between 2018 and 2022, direct Australian investment in Canada’s mining and quarrying industry grew exponentially from $1.7 billion to $9.8 billion, according to Statistics Canada. In just two years from 2020 to 2022, the investment more than doubled. While the figures for 2023 are not yet available, anecdotally, it seems the Australian mining wave in Canada continues to grow.

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How Rio Tinto changed Australia – by Andrew Clark (Australian Financial Review – November 19, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

The group’s pioneering role in the Pilbara helped transform the nation through engagement with Asia. A new book reveals the full story for the first time.

Back in the early 50s, Clem Walton, a taxi driver and amateur prospector, set out with three of his sons, a local station hand and a Geiger Counter on a dry creek bed about 50 kilometres east of the Mt Isa copper mine.

As the party trod warily “the counter went off the scale”, indicating rich uranium reserves. The group pegged two mining leases, named the area Mary Kathleen after Walton’s recently deceased wife, and initiated talks with interested mining companies.

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Allkem and Livent bosses face down criticism of $16b lithium merger – by Brad Thompson and Anthony Macdonald (Australian Financial Review – November 12, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Senior executives at Allkem and Livent say investors are supportive of the $US10 billion ($16 billion) merger between the two mining groups despite increasing concerns that volatility in the lithium price is making the deal, struck in May, increasingly unattractive to the former’s shareholders.

Allkem managing director Martín Pérez de Solay and his Livent counterpart, Paul Graves, are in Australia to meet investors this week before a shareholder vote on the deal on December 19. There have been – so far limited, but growing – calls for the deal to be reconsidered, and it has been described by Jefferies analysts as a “cheap reverse acquisition of Allkem”.

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Solidifying Mount Isa’s mining future – by Tom Parker (Australian Resources and Investment – November 9, 2023)

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With Glencore set to downsize Mount Isa in 2025, what is the way forward for the North West Minerals Province?

Glencore’s recent announcement that its Mount Isa copper operations and Lady Loretta zinc mine would close in 2025 sent shockwaves through the Queensland mining industry.It signalled the end of two of Australia’s most iconic mining operations, which have supported the world with a sustainable supply of copper, lead, zinc and silver for up to 60 years.

In the wake of Glencore’s announcement, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a $50 million support package for the Mount Isa region and those affected by the impending closure.

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Newmont Prepares to Sell Mines as Newcrest Acquisition Closes – by Jacob Lorinc (Bloomberg News – November 6, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Newmont Corp., the world’s top gold producer, will forge ahead on a plan to find $2 billion in cash including through mine sales and project divestments after closing the largest takeover in the mining industry this year.

Denver-based Newmont closed its roughly $15 billion acquisition of Newcrest Mining Ltd. on Monday, ending a nearly year-long effort to buy the Australian gold miner.

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Lithium producers stay bullish on EVs despite growing headwinds – by Ernest Scheyder and Melanie Burton (Reuters – November 2, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

Nov 2 (Reuters) – The world’s largest lithium producers say they remain bullish on long-term demand for the battery material in the midst of recent price drops fueled by growing worries that the global pace of electric vehicle adoption is slowing.

LG Energy Solution (373220.KS), General Motors (GM.N), Honda (7267.T) and other auto and battery makers have trimmed EV expansion plans in recent weeks, partly due to rising interest rates, which in turn has stoked concerns of a supply glut for the battery metal. A basket of prices for lithium – which vary by region and by type – tracked by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has dropped more than 60% this year.

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Mining faces gulf between ambition and reality on energy transition, China – by Clyde Russell (Reuters – November 1, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

Mining companies in the West are facing two overarching challenges in trying to produce enough metals to enable the energy transition, and at the same time build alternative supply chains to lessen their dependence on China.

The problem is that there is a vast gulf between the scale of the ambition and the reality of what’s actually happening, and what’s likely to happen in the next few years.

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The world’s iron ore powerhouse is preparing to reinvent itself – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – October 28, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Vast heaps of crushed brown rock hem the Indian Ocean at Western Australia’s Parker Point port — each a stockpile of 200,000 tons of iron ore, ready to be poured into a procession of bulk carriers bound for Asia’s steel mills.

Rio Tinto Group, the world’s largest iron ore producer, shipped its first cargo of the steelmaking ingredient from this spot in 1966, at the dawn of a boom that minted billionaires and lifted the Australian economy, generating A$1.3 trillion ($820 billion) in earnings in the past two decades alone. Last year, iron ore shipments accounted for about 5% of the country’s gross domestic product.

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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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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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