(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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The iron ore boom in the 2000s ushered in a new class of mining millionaires and billionaires. While vast iron ore fortunes were amassed in the Pilbara, a graveyard of broken hopes and dreams also littered the region’s harsh landscape.
And there’s danger of history potentially repeating itself via the latest Pilbara-focused lithium frenzy. The lithium industry is no stranger to a bubble. The first bubble well and truly burst by 2020, with Alita Resources and Altura Mining two notable victims.
Billionaire acquires 18% of Azure Minerals after Chile’s SQM announces planned buyout
Billionaire Gina Rinehart has built up a strategic stake in Australian lithium developer Azure Minerals, threatening to scupper a second takeover involving the battery metal in a matter of weeks.
Chilean miner SQM said this week it had agreed to buy out Azure at an equity valuation of about $1bn. SQM, the world’s second-largest lithium producer, had bought a stake of almost 20 per cent in Azure in January to diversify beyond its home market.
Gina Rinehart might be known as a climate sceptic, but Australia’s richest person knows when there is “green” dollars to be made from digging things out of the ground. She is just one of the West Australian mining billionaires who are in a mad scramble for the state’s vast deposits of lithium – the metal dubbed “white gold” due to its market value and silver colour.
Its value lies not in its scarcity, but in the booming demand for the lightest of metals. It is essential for powering the batteries, which are the driving force behind the global electric vehicle wave. Batteries are also the most expensive component of these cars.
(Bloomberg) — Lithium mining giant SQM has won over Perth-based Azure Minerals Ltd. with a sweetened A$1.6 billion ($1 billion) cash offer, the latest deal as large battery-metal producers race to secure supply in Australia, home to some of the world’s richest deposits.
Azure’s board will back the new binding bid from SQM, which increased its cash offer by 52% to A$3.52 per share, the Australian producer said Thursday. That’s a 44% premium over Azure’s closing price on Oct. 20, and follows a previously rejected non-binding offer of A$2.31 made in August. The company’s shares jumped as much as 44% on Thursday to A$3.52, their highest price since June 2008.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
Which of Australia’s iron ore billionaires has more money invested in advancing the energy transition? Andrew Forrest, a green evangelist who recently warned that “it’s business which will kill your children?” Or Gina Rinehart, a Trump-supporting culture warrior who’s characterized climate science as propaganda? Believe it or not, at this point it’s neck and neck.
After muscling her way into a takeover battle for lithium developer Liontown Resources Ltd., Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty vehicle now has well over A$1.28 billion ($809 million) invested in energy-transition materials, including a 19.9% stake in Liontown and a royalty stream from a separate lithium project.(1) The power division of Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group Ltd., which he’s promised to turn into one of the world’s biggest energy companies, had assets of $819 million at the end of June.
Mining companies will gain an extra $2 billion to expand the production of critical minerals needed for renewable energy and high-tech devices under a federal plan to meet soaring demand for the components tightly controlled by China.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will double the finance available to key exporters from $2 billion to $4 billion in the hope of unlocking vast reserves of lithium, nickel and other essential elements for batteries and other renewable technologies.
Newly announced closures of Glencore’s copper and zinc mines in Mt Isa will add to a huge number of former mines in Australia. A 2020 study by Monash University’s Resources Trinity Group found more than 80,000 inactive mine sites across the country.
Globally, a 2023 study estimates the mining footprint at around 66,000 square kilometres. Abandoned mines account for much of this area. It’s estimated the US has about 500,000 abandoned mines and Canada at least 10,000. The UK and China have at least 1,500 and 12,000 old coalmines, respectively.
https://www.lowyinstitute.org/
The world is moving away from a rules-based order and towards power politics. Is Canberra ready?
Last month, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated geopolitics is now the biggest global risk to the economy. Australian business leaders on the receiving end of Chinese economic coercion could have sent that memo to Wall Street two years ago.
So could many of the world’s governments who have been busily implementing economic policy for a geopolitical world. From war in Ukraine and exploitation of energy, to economic coercion and weaponisation of wine, we are living through a geopolitical transition to a new world economy.
Mining giant BHP has sold two of its central Queensland coal mines for more than $US4 billion. Australian company Whitehaven Coal has purchased the Blackwater and Daunia mines which produce some of the world’s highest quality coking coal for steelmaking.
The Blackwater site, located south-east of Emerald, is also one of the southern hemisphere’s longest coking coal mines, with a striking rate of 80 kilometres. Daunia is located south-east of Moranbah in the Bowen Basin and has only been operational since 2013.
