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Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles

Australia to propose green mining standards amid slump in EV metals – by Ryohtaroh Satch (Nikkei Asia – February 7, 2024)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

Resources minister cites need to protect industry as Asian competition grows

TOKYO — Australia will propose setting up international standards for ethical and environmentally friendly mining in an attempt to command higher prices for its minerals amid a sluggish market and competition from countries like Indonesia.

“It’s a long-term project, but there’s no doubt there’s something I’ll be raising,” Minister for Resources Madeleine King told Nikkei Asia while visiting Tokyo last week. King said she will propose the idea at the PDAC 2024 Convention, a mineral industry trade event, in Canada in March.

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Canada’s dream of becoming a critical minerals powerhouse runs into crashing metals prices, delaying mine development – by Tim Kiladze (Globe and Mail – February 7, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Plummeting prices for metals such as lithium and nickel are dashing Canada’s dream of becoming a global juggernaut for critical minerals, with a market capitulation making it even more challenging to raise the money needed to build new mines.

The situation is growing so dire that some miners have started calling for heavy-handed government intervention, including the possibility of Ottawa directly funding new projects, because they worry that Canada will lose the race to produce these minerals to rivals such as China for good.

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Stop China’s neo-Marxist EV trade war – by Terence Corcoran (Financial Post – February 7, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

If it’s really about fighting climate change, let cheap Chinese EVs into Canada

The website of the Toronto International AutoShow, which opens next week, boasts a section called Electric City, but don’t look for any of China’s low-cost electric brands there. As the world seems to be heading for a global electric vehicle trade war, one wonders whether we will ever see cheaper made-in-China EVs on the roads of Canada. Maybe not, if the current Canadian and global EV policy regimes remain in place.

The international auto market has never been a model of free trade perfection, but the current upheaval may turn out to be a major reversal in national and international trade policy and a threat to global stability. The main shift is the transformation of the auto industry into a major battleground for state economic intervention and control.

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Forrests forced to prop up struggling nickel business as prices slide – by Peter Ker and Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – February 6, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

The billionaire Forrest family has tipped another $31 million into its privately held Australian nickel business amid expectations it will burn cash and face an impairment.

Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s private Wyloo vehicle paid more than $700 million to acquire Mincor Resources last year, but has already been forced to announce closure of the mines following a significant slump in the nickel price. Mincor was also affected by product quality issues linked to higher than expected arsenic levels in the nickel ore.

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‘The wind just died down’: Lithium miners try to hold on as prices slump – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – February 6, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

Falling prices hurting investor appetite and threaten to crush exploration

Miner Paul Cowley decided two years ago to shift his focus to lithium from gold when his company acquired the mineral rights for multiple small claims containing the light metal in central Alberta.

Given lithium’s skyrocketing prices and investors pouring money into companies associated with the metal needed to power electric-vehicle batteries, the chief executive of TSX Venture-listed Indigo Exploration Inc. thought it was the perfect time to make the move.

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OPINION: Canada’s huge bet on the EV battery industry demands a jolt of reality – by Andrew Coyne (Globe and Mail – February 2, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

When it comes to the green transition, let no one say the Trudeau government is unwilling to put other people’s money where its mouth is. Why, in just one sector, a sector of a sector really – making batteries for electric vehicles – the government has put $44-billion at risk: one of the “big bets” on Canada’s industrial future of which it likes to boast.

In fact, that $44-billion (I’m using the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s figures here, rather than the official estimate of $38-billion) is for just three factories: $14.4-billion to persuade Volkswagen to make batteries in St. Thomas, Ont., $16-billion to induce Stellantis (the former Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot SA) to open a plant in Windsor, and $7.3-billion to lure Swedish battery maker Northvolt into suburban Montreal. (The remainder, on the PBO’s calculations, is the revenue cost of exempting these subsidies from the usual tax.)

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Battleground Africa: In a world thirsting for its critical minerals, respect is the new currency – by Frank Giustra (Toronto Star – February 2, 2024)

https://www.thestar.com/

Nations desperate for Africa’s minerals, writes Frank Giustra, should find a way to compete with China’s investments in the continent.

“The new scramble for resources on the continent offers an opportunity for Africa to reset its relations with more powerful external actors. Africa’s wealth of critical minerals will be essential to help the world achieve its energy transition. In return, African leaders should negotiate smart deals that ensure the continent draws just recompense for the minerals on its soil — and ensure those benefits are spread evenly to its citizens.”

Dr. Comfort Ero, president and CEO, the International Crisis Group

… The world is already facing an enormous deficit in minerals for our future needs, but with the transition to clean energy, the projected deficit will be almost impossible to fulfil.

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Closure of Panama copper mine threatens e-transition – by Jack Mintz (Financial Post – February 2, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

Forced shutdown of $10-billion mine signals to companies: invest in rule-of-law countries only

Canada’s First Quantum Minerals, sixth largest copper producer in the world, has learned the hard way: a US$10-billion mining project can be cancelled after several years in operation with the support of several successive governments.

In December, the Panamanian government ordered the closing of FQM’s Cobre Panamá mine, which produced 350,000 tonnes of copper in 2022. This represents 1.5 per cent of global copper supply and five per cent of Panama’s GDP, neither a trivial number.

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Focus: Western miners lag as oil powers enter race for Africa’s critical metals – by Felix Njini and Clara Denina (Reuters – February 2, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

Risk aversion is likely to leave major Western miners lagging in a race to tap Africa’s reserves of critical raw materials that has gathered pace now Middle Eastern oil powers have begun to emulate China’s years of investment on the continent.

Attracting the capital needed to advance copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium projects in Africa will be high on the agenda when executives, bankers and government officials gather in Cape Town, South Africa, for the annual African Mining Indaba beginning on Monday.

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Tesla, VW at Risk of Ties to Uyghur Forced Labor in China – by Linda Lew (Bloomberg News – February 1, 2024)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Five of the world’s major carmakers aren’t sufficiently mapping their supply chains to stamp out links to forced labor programs in China’s Xinjiang region, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

The area in China’s northwest is an important aluminum producer, accounting for about 9% of global supply, and the industry has ties to state-sponsored labor transfer programs that have been accused of coercing Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities into jobs, it said.

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OPINION: Pushing electric vehicles is virtue-signalling and fighting the free market – by Gus Carlson (Globe and Mail – February 3, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The problem with government mandates aimed at manipulating free markets is they are typically based in political expediency, not commercial reality.

As more potholes appear on the road to electric-vehicle nirvana, edicts by lawmakers in Canada and states such as California and New York to require all new-car sales be EVs by 2035 are proving the point: Politically motivated virtue signals rarely withstand pressure testing from real-world market forces.

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Activists, Hollywood take down top 50 mining company – by Frik Els (Mining.com – January 31, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

The ranks of the most valuable mining companies in the world were throughly scrambled in 2023 as governments intervened, lithium and nickel prices tumbled, gold hit records and a new listing went ballistic.

At the end of 2023, the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners reached a combined $1.42 trillion, up a healthy, if far from spectacular $48.7 billion over the course of 2023. Mining’s top tier is also worth $330 billion less than in March 2022.

Metal and mineral markets are volatile at the best of times – the nickel, cobalt and lithium price collapse in 2023 was extreme but not entirely unprecedented. Rare earth producers, platinum group metal watchers, iron ore followers, and gold and silver bugs for that matter, have been through worse.

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Opinion: Critical minerals boom goes bust – by Jennifer Hewett (Australian Financial Review – February 1, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

The collapse of lithium and nickel prices is a rude awakening for Australia’s miners, but also reveals the challenges in the Albanese government’s ambition for greater domestic manufacturing.

The West Australian government’s budget is still flush with mining royalties thanks to iron ore. But although iron ore will continue to sustain the state’s finances, last year’s excited rhetoric about Australia instantly becoming home to a rich new resources boom in critical minerals is now looking distinctly threadbare.

In early 2023, WA politicians were marvelling that lithium royalties had suddenly grown to be worth $1 billion a year, for example, albeit a distant second to iron ore. Then minister for state development and now premier Roger Cook boasted of WA’s ambitions in critical minerals processing, extending from lithium hydroxide to nickel sulphate to battery manufacturing.

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EV Stocks Were Once Worth $100 Billion. Now They Face a Bleak Future – by Thyagaraju Adinarayan and Michael Msika (Bloomberg News – January 30, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Gone are the days of starry stock market debuts that sent valuations of electric-vehicle makers soaring. Now, floating an EV stock is only for the brave.

A torrent of bad news for the sector this week confirms how far it has fallen in just a few years. First Renault SA scrapped an initial public offering of its EV and software arm Ampere citing valuation concerns. Then, Bloomberg reported Volkswagen AG has put efforts to seek outside investors for its PowerCo battery unit on the back burner.

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Indonesian nickel boom claims another WA mine, and hundreds of jobs – by Peter Milne and Simon Johanson (Sydney Morning Herald – January 31, 2024)

https://www.smh.com.au/

Battery minerals specialist IGO will close its Cosmos nickel mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields region at the cost of about 400 jobs as cheap production from Indonesia wreaks havoc with Australian producers. IGO chief executive Ivan Vella said the ability of Indonesian nickel miners to cost-effectively build new mines and processing plants and bring them to full capacity had caught the market by surprise.

Vella, presenting his first results since joining IGO from Rio Tinto in December, said the recent nickel price plunge meant it would not be prudent to bring the new mine into full production.

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