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Serbia set to give green light to Rio Tinto lithium mine – by Marton Dunai, Alec Russell, Harry Dempsey and Alice Hancock (Financial Times – June 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Exploitation of one of the world’s largest deposits of the metal would boost Europe’s electric vehicle industry

Serbia is preparing to give Rio Tinto the green light to develop Europe’s largest lithium mine two years after Belgrade called off the project, paving the way for a significant boost for the continent’s electric vehicle industry.

President Aleksandar Vučić said that “new guarantees” from the Anglo-Australian miner and EU looked set to address Serbia’s concerns over whether necessary environmental standards would be met at the Jadar site in the west of the country.

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Federal minister bullish on Greater Sudbury’s future – by Jim Moodie (Sudbury Star – June 12, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Jonathan Wilkinson says city in a position to provide critical minerals but also process them to help make batteries for electric vehicles

The Nickel City is in a great position to benefit from the push for greener transportation, not only by supplying the ingredients for batteries but also by hosting plants to process them, according to Canada’s energy and natural resources minister.

“For a community like Sudbury, which is an historic mining town, I think that critical minerals are an enormous opportunity,” said Jonathan Wilkinson during a visit to the city on Monday. “It’s an opportunity for mining, yes, but it’s also an opportunity for great manufacturing jobs.

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A plan to mine lithium could eradicate a Nevada flower. Is extinction just the cost of green energy? – by Matthew Rozsa (Salon.com – June 13, 2024)

https://www.salon.com/

Botanists express alarm that a rare plant, the Tiehm’s buckwheat, won’t survive where a lithium mine is planned

Botanist Jerry Tiehm, the curator of herbarium at the University of Nevada Reno, discovered the plant that now bears his name more than 40 years ago. It was early in his career, and Tiehm was driving through a remote central Nevada canyon while collecting samples to study.

He was unaware at the time that it was an unknown species until a different expert informed him that the yellow, white and green plant was something altogether new. Indigenous to a tiny patch of land no larger than 10 acres in area, the new plant was named Tiehm’s buckwheat after its discoverer.

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Researchers get $5M to find nickel, other metals, in Sudbury mine waste – by Staff (Sudbury Star – June 10, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

The idea is they can be used to help make batteries for electric vehicles while reducing the environmental impact of tailings areas

A research arm of Laurentian University will get $5 million to find ways of recovering nickel, cobalt and copper from mine waste in Sudbury that can be used to make batteries for electric vehicles. Jonathan Wilkinson, the federal minister of Energy and Natural Resources, made the announcement in Sudbury on Monday.

The money will go to the Mining Innovation Rehabilitation and Applied Research Corp – or MIRARCO – based at Laurentian University.

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Armstrong lithium explorer moving to mine construction decision as CEO departs – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – June 10, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Green Technology Metals on the hunt for financing partners, government funding for mine and Thunder Bay refinery

Green Technology Metals, a fast-moving Australian lithium explorer in northwestern Ontario, is on the hunt for a new CEO. Luke Cox is resigning as of July 19. Cameron Henry, the company’s executive director, will step in on interim basis until a successor is named.

The news comes at a pivotal time as Green Tech said it’s preparing to line up financing and carry out the technical studies needed to make a decision on constructing an open-pit mine near the north end of Lake Nipigon.

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Sudbury column: Geopolitics, global warming make the Ring of Fire as important as ever – by Stan Sudol (Sudbury Star – June 8, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Construction of a road to the mine site needs to start now

Without a doubt, the Ring of Fire camp and its many strategic minerals that include nickel, copper, platinum group metals, chromite and titanium – just to mention a few as explorers have just scratched the proverbial surface – is the most important mining discovery in Canadian history. It may even exceed the legendary Sudbury Basin someday.

Discovered in 2007, the region is located approximately 450 km northeast of Thunder Bay in the isolated and vast peatlands of Hudson Bay, which itself is roughly the size of Norway but with only about 10,000 people. Contrary to fanatical ENGOs, sustainable mineral development and exploration practices will have minimal impact on the environment and provide the critical minerals needed to stop global warming.

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Communities on the Move: Sudbury’s mining landscape ‘never been more exciting,’ says exec – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – June 7, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Stakeholders champion city as leader in critical minerals production

The Sudbury Basin has been a mining hotspot for more than a century, but as demand grows for critical minerals like nickel, there’s never been a more exciting time for the industry than right now.

That’s according to Gord Gilpin, the director of Ontario operations for Vale Base Metals, who led off a Sudbury-themed panel discussion at the BEV In Depth: Mines to Mobility conference May 30 at Cambrian College.

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New Caledonia crisis: Does France fear China will dominate Pacific colonies? – by Christine Rovoi (Pacific Media Network – June 7, 2024)

https://pmn.co.nz/

If you think the French Empire – powerful in the 19th and 20th centuries – no longer exists, you may want to think again. Thirteen colonies fly the French flag and speak the French language today. Independence has not yet come to these territories, and New Caledonia is among them.

Located less than 2400km north of Aotearoa New Zealand, New Caledonia has a population of 272,000 (2019 Census) with 40 per cent the Indigenous Kanaks. The Pacific island nation is reeling from political unrest following the 13 May protests, led by pro-independence supporters, in the capital Noumēa last month.

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China’s control and coercion in critical minerals – by Ian Satchewell (Australian Strategic Policy Institute – June 7, 2024)

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/

Markets for critical minerals are no longer shaping up to be the next components of the global economy to be dominated by China. They already are.

While Western nations were sleeping, China built vertically integrated supply chains for several critical minerals vital to the energy transition and high technology applications, including defence equipment.

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Nigeria turns to lithium as its oil industry struggles (Euro Dayfr.com – June 6, 2024)

https://euro.dayfr.com/

As Nigeria’s oil reserves begin to run out after decades of crude oil exploitation, the West African country is turning to another valuable resource – lithium. There is a growing global demand for this “white gold”, necessary for the production of batteries for electrical appliances, electric vehicles and renewable energy storage.

Nigeria is estimated to have significant lithium resources, but the country’s mining industry is currently underdeveloped. Furthermore, the government must tackle the problem of resource theft, support the sustainable development of the mining industry and ensure that foreign players add value to the domestic market. rian of lithium to guarantee its success.

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Don’t underestimate world demand for Nickel, CEO says – by Nicole Stoffman (Timmins Press – June 7, 2024)

https://www.timminspress.com/

Mineral remains a resilient investment for both stainless steel and batteries: Selby

The ever-ebullient CEO of Canada Nickel Company, Mark Selby, is bullish on Nickel, despite Canadian’s growing skepticism about electric vehicles.

According to an April survey from AutoTrader, the number of Canadians interested in buying an EV fell from 68 per cent in 2022 to 46 per cent in 2024. People are concerned about inadequate charging infrastructure, the cars’ limited range, higher cost, and performance in cold weather.

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Metals expert warns of shortage of high-grade nickel near 2030 – by Erwida Maulia (Asia Nikkei – June 7, 2024)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

Comes amid surging demand from EV battery producers

JAKARTA — Demand for the kind of high-grade nickel used to make electric vehicle batteries is set to outpace supply in the coming years, a metals expert said at an industry conference in Indonesia this week.

Allan Ray Restauro, a metals and mining analyst at energy researcher BloombergNEF, told the Indonesia Miner event in Jakarta that output of so-called Class 1 nickel is unlikely to accelerate rapidly enough to catch up with growing demand, even as production of lower-quality varieties of the metal surges.

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Emerging Sudbury nickel-copper miner strikes milling deal with Glencore – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – June 5, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Magna Mining will extract, ship 20,000 tonne bulk sample to Strathcona mill

Sudbury upstart Magna Mining has signed a toll milling agreement with Glencore in preparation for early-stage test mining at its Crean Hill Project.

The nickel and copper mine development company issued a June 4 news release of its plans to transport a 20,000-tonne surface bulk sample across town to Glencore’s Strathcona mill to make into a concentrate material. The bulk sample is being extracted from a mineralized area at Crean Hill called the 109 Footwall Zone.

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Can the West ‘friendshore’ enough critical minerals? – by Gregory Wischer and Shubham Dwivedi (Asia Times – June 6, 2024)

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Western nations have sufficient reserves to decouple from China but mining those deposits at a market profit won’t be easy

Over the coming years, Western countries will require tremendous volumes of critical minerals given the demand for mineral-rich technologies like electric vehicle batteries.

A popular policy proposal for supplying and de-risking this mineral demand in industrialized Western countries is “friendshoring,” where partner countries source extracted minerals from each other instead of relying on geopolitical adversaries, namely China.

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Fueling the Future: Sudbury conference focuses on critical minerals – by Hugh Kruzel (Sudbury Star – June 5, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Those who attended also talked about the supply chain to deliver them

Once again, Cambrian College was the site of the BEV In-Depth: Mines to Mobility conference. This third annual conference, held last week, gathered players in the Battery Electric Vehicle future of Ontario to listen, learn and exchange ideas.

“It is a natural fit for us – and Sudbury – to step forward into this future,” said Shawn Poland, Cambrian’s vice president of External Partnerships, Strategic Enrollment. “Cambrian and other Sudbury institutions can play an important role in research and development.”

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