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Trump threatened to suspend the ‘conflict minerals’ provision of Dodd-Frank. That might actually be good for Congo. – by Nik Stoop, Marijke Verpoorten and Peter van der Windt (Washington Post – September 27, 2018)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/

Most Americans think of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act as a far-reaching effort to regulate the financial services industry to prevent another global recession. But there’s a somewhat obscure provision involving Congo that the Trump administration threatened to undo.

And that might have been a good thing for Congo, since — according to our research — the provision had troubling unintended consequences and was not helping to reduce conflict, as intended.

In February 2017, President Trump threatened to suspend Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which would have required his administration to replace it with ‘more effective means.’ Although the suspension did not actually take effect, his interest in suspending the law is a reminder of a contentious piece of legislation that had noble intentions but mixed effects.

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Blood Batteries – Cobalt And The Congo – by James Conca (Forbes Magazine – September 26, 2018)

https://www.forbes.com/

Vivienne Walt and Sebastian Meyer wrote a piercing analysis in Fortune on the conditions surrounding Co supply from the world’s largest supplier of the metal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.

The reason this is so important is that many of the people who support the new energy technological revolution of non-fossil fuels, renewables and new nuclear SMRs, electric vehicles, conservation and efficiency, also care about the social issues that many of these technologies incorporate in their wake – corruption, environmental pollution, extreme poverty and child labor.

And the supply of Co is the perfect intersection of these two issues. With support from the Pulitzer Center, Walt and Meyer focused on the lives of the poor laborers in this former Belgian colony, especially children, and how their exploitation is making our lives easier.

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SoftBank moves to lock up lithium, the lifeblood of electric cars – by Minoru Satake (Nikkei Asian Review – September 24, 2018)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

TOKYO — SoftBank Group is on the hunt for natural resources, particularly the lithium needed for electric car and smartphone batteries.

Demand is expected to surge as more electric vehicles hit roads worldwide. Competition for battery materials is stiff, with Apple rushing to secure supplies of cobalt. And SoftBank considers lithium a priority, as it looks to build a stronger foundation for its other investments, like ride-hailing companies.

In June, SoftBank enlisted the chairman of trading house Mitsui & Co., Masami Iijima, to serve on its board as an outside director. A SoftBank executive said the move was made to “facilitate our future efforts to secure resources.”

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Vale: Embracing The Electric Vehicle Revolution (Seeking Alpha – September 24, 2018)

https://seekingalpha.com/

Vale’s (VALE) iron ore operations have been by far the main driver of the company’s performance. Because of this, the Base Metals division tends to fly under the radar, despite Vale being the world’s largest producer of nickel.

However, Vale has big plans for its nickel and copper divisions, and the Brazilian company has identified the rise of electric vehicle and renewables as an important growth driver, especially in nickel. The main focus of this article will be the nickel developments, but we will also touch on copper. Both should help the Base Metals division contribute meaningfully to earnings from 2020.

Base Metals’ contribution is still modest, but rising

Investors can be forgiven for paying more attention to the Ferrous Minerals division, which includes iron ore and related metals. This segment is by far the main contributor to Vale’s performance. The company’s latest quarterly publication, for Q2 2018, confirms the weight of Ferrous Minerals:

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RPT-COLUMN-Nickel’s “electric premium” crushed by trade tensions – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – September 18, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Nickel has finally succumbed to the base metals price rout. It is still the best year-to-date performer among the core six metals traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME)

But at a current $12,400 per tonne, LME three-month metal is, like the rest of the pack, now trading below year-start levels. The excitement around the potential boost to nickel demand from its use in electric vehicle batteries hasn’t been completely dispelled.

But the “electric premium” in the price has been crushed by the broader market concerns about the escalating trade stand-off between the United States and China.

The tensions between nickel’s electric future and the metal’s current stainless steel reality are all too evident and if anything are going to become more acute the further the price falls.

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Solid demand to underpin lithium as price slides in 2018 – by Zandi Shabalala (Reuters U.S. – September 17, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – An oversupply of lithium this year has nearly halved prices this year in China, halting an unprecedented run for the key component for batteries used in electric vehicles.

But analysts say solid long-term demand should shore up the market after a slight surplus in demand this year. A boom in electric vehicles has boosted prices for components of lithium-ion batteries including lithium and cobalt, as consumers such as car companies to scramble to secure supplies.

But lithium prices have come under pressure in 2018 because miners have ramped up production, consumers destocked supplies and a subsidies in China’s new energy vehicles (NEV’s) market have been pulled back.

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Chile lawmakers mull additional mining tax for copper, lithium – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 14, 2018)

http://www.mining.com/

The Lower Chamber of Chile’s Parliament has begun studying a project that would set a 3% mining royalty for all companies operating in the country, which is the world’s top copper producer and the one with the largest known reserves of lithium.

The proposed tax, to be applied on the nominal value of extracted metals, would affect copper miners that produce more than 12,000 tonnes of the metal annually and those extracting 50,000 tonnes a year of lithium, used in batteries that power electric cars.

The idea is to have miners contributing part of their profits to the regions where they operate, Radio Universidad de Chile reported (in Spanish).

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Japan’s Sumitomo to focus on battery material supply to Panasonic, Toyota – by Yuka Obayashi and Ritsuko Shimizu (Reuters U.K. – September 13, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd (SMM) (5713.T) plans to focus on two key customers for its battery materials, Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Panasonic Corp (6752.T), supplier of car power packs to Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), SMM’s new president said.

While Toyota and Panasonic are already SMM’s biggest customers, rising sales of electric cars – led by Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 – mean the Japanese miner and smelter is in a sweet spot it needs to protect.

SMM has spent 37 billion yen (254.44 million pounds) over the past four years to boost capacity of the nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA) cathode materials used in Panasonic’s lithium-ion battery that powers Tesla’s Model 3 and Model X.

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Tesla Lithium Dash Could Slow as Mine Project Faces Hurdle – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – September 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

An Australian mining lithium project that has an agreement to supply Tesla Inc. faces a legal hurdle that may delay plans to start production, potentially spurring shortages of the mineral used in batteries for electric cars.

A court in Perth recommended Western Australia’s mining ministry shouldn’t approve an exemption from past minimum exploration-expenditure obligations at the Mt. Holland hard-rock project, lithium giant SQM said in a statement on Wednesday.

Development of Mt. Holland, owned by SQM and Kidman Resources Ltd., could be slowed if the ministry doesn’t award the exemption, SQM said.

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Congo Plans to Build Special Economic Zone for Cobalt Users – by William Clowes (Bloomberg News – September 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Democratic Republic of Congo plans to establish special economic zones for companies that manufacture goods from the country’s minerals, President Joseph Kabila said.

“There is a need to create special economic zones for the final users of Congolese natural resources,” Kabila said at a conference Wednesday in the southeastern city of Kolwezi. The area will allow producers of electric vehicles, smartphones and other goods to “install themselves in the DRC,” he said.

Congo is the world’s biggest source of cobalt, which is used to make rechargeable batteries in electric cars manufactured by companies including Volkswagen AG. The country also produces more than a quarter of the world’s tantalum, used in Apple iPhones and other smartphones.

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Cobalt Shortages Ahead – by Mark Lapedus (SemiConductor Engineering – September 10, 2018)

SemiConductor Engineering

Growth in electric vehicles and batteries is causing supply issues that could affect broad swaths of the electronics market.

Rapid growth of electric vehicles is creating an enormous demand for cobalt, causing tight supply, high prices and supply chain issues for this critical material.

Cobalt is a ferromagnetic metal and one of the key materials used in lithium-ion batteries for cell phones, notebook PCs, battery-electric cars and hybrids. It also is used in alloys and semiconductors. And while the IC industry consumes a tiny percentage of the world’s cobalt supply, that supply is tightening.

For cobalt, the big growth market is the electric car business, which requires tons of cobalt a year. In the supply chain, metals are mined and processed into cobalt.

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Electric Cars Give New Life to Mine Excavated for Nuclear Power – by Jonathan Tirone (Bloomberg News – September 10, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Demand for a new generation of electric vehicles is breathing life into an Alpine mine that was originally excavated to feed an Austrian nuclear industry that never materialized.

The developer of the site in Wolfsberg, European Lithium Ltd., is planning to move its primary stock listing to Austria from Australia in anticipation transforming the site into the continent’s biggest producer of the light metal that powers plug-in vehicles, according to a company executive.

“The potential off-take clients are European automakers,” Stefan Mueller, a non-executive director at European Lithium, said in a telephone interview. “They know that they have to secure lithium.”

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Lithium: Best of Times/Worst of Times? – by Joe Lowry (LinkedIn.com – September 8, 2018)

Joe Lowry: One of the World’s Leading Lithium Market Experts.

This has been a strange year in the lithium world. There has been a constant stream of good news about long term demand growth from the electric transportation and ESS markets. Yet, lithium stock prices have dropped precipitously largely due the constant din from the “oversupply camp” that a “tsunami of supply” from Australia was about to enter the market via China converters and crash lithium chemical prices.

In 2018 there is some level of “logic” to support either the short term “oversupply” or “tight market” view. Those who believe lithium start-ups are easy have no support from history but that belief is the cornerstone of “oversupply” thinking

However, in my opinion, the vast majority of data still supports relatively tight supply and strong lithium prices for the next few years. Strong price does not mean the highest China pricing from 2016. As long as the market is tight the price will not be cost curve driven but a result of market forces: meaning above and in certain cases, such as today, well above the cash cost of the high cost producer.

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Battery Maker Eyes India’s $300 Billion Lithium-Ion Market – by Archana Chaudhary and Swansy Afonso (Bloomberg News – September 6, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Amara Raja Batteries Ltd., India’s second-biggest traditional battery maker by value, will build a lithium-ion assembly plant as it seeks to grab a slice of the market for electric vehicle power packs that is set to grow to $300 billion by 2030.

The battery maker is in the process of building a 100 megawatt-hour assembly plant in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh and the company is working closely with the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, Chief Executive Officer S. Vijayanand said in an interview in New Delhi.

“There’s incubation work going on because we are at a beginning stage both from the market-demand and product-development perspective,” Vijayanand said. “We are very focused on building solutions for the early stage of electrification of vehicles and work with the OEM programs at the same time.”

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Journo’s new book shines light on nickel – by Josh Chiat (Kalgoorlie Miner – September 6, 2018)

https://thewest.com.au/

A pioneering mining journalist who bore witness to the Goldfields’ first nickel boom as a reporter at Kalgoorlie’s ABC bureau believes there is a bright future for the cyclical base metal.

Ross Louthean came to Kalgoorlie-Boulder as a young journalist from Port Pirie in the late 1960s and witnessed the onset and development of the famous Kambalda nickel district.

He also lived in the region through the Poseidon crash — the nickel exploration boom in the 1970s which prompted the regulation of Australia’s stock markets after a reported find near Laverton fuelled by speculation pumped shares in penny stock Poseidon Nickel to more than $280 a share in a matter of weeks.

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