BEIJING/MELBOURNE, Feb 28 (Reuters) – Rare discounts offered by Chinese battery giant CATL (300750.SZ) to automakers have accelerated a plunge in lithium prices, and the market is set to drop a further 25% with supply growth outpacing demand, analysts and traders say.
After a frenzied rush by electric vehicle makers to secure raw materials over the past two years, which drove prices for lithium carbonate up more than six-fold and spodumene up nearly ten-fold, the bubble has burst.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Glencore Sudbury INO’s $350,000 donation to Cambrian College will be ‘transformative gift’ in advancing BEV innovation
Growing up, Matteo Neville was the kind of kid who spent his time taking apart motors and engines just so he could figure out how they worked.
He was fascinated by robotics and technology, electronics and programming, so when he decided to return to school as a mature student, he was immediately drawn to Cambrian College’s mechatronics program.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
THE owners of the only producing lithium mine in the country are preparing to invest $176 million to build a new concentrator in Manitoba, which may be a precursor to an even larger investment in the province.
Tantalum Mining Corp. of Canada Ltd., which owns the lithium Tanco Mine near Lac du Bonnet, has already begun preliminary work on the site and is in discussions with neighbouring Sagkeeng First Nation. Consultants are preparing the information needed to apply for permits.
House Republicans, leery of Democrats’ climate policies, are pushing an alternative agenda: reducing US reliance on foreign-sourced critical minerals for everything from green energy to military equipment.
“This country would be in dire straits” if adversary nations stopped selling the US critical minerals, Pete Stauber (R-Minn.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee, said in an interview. “We need to move on this, and keep the safety and security of this country in the palm of our own hands.”
Production has resumed in China’s Yichun, “Asia’s lithium capital”, after a government investigation into illegal mining activity last week temporarily halted production in the local lithium industry.
Some lepidolite mines restarted mining activity on Monday, according to Chinese media outlet Cailian. Soon after news of the production resumption emerged, the shares of leading lithium producers with mines in Yichun rose slightly on Tuesday. Shenzhen-listed Anshan Heavy Duty Mining Machinery, for instance, rose 2.25 per cent.
Singapore | China’s lithium industry is reeling as its top production hub – responsible for about a 10th of the world’s supply – faces sweeping closures amid a government probe of environmental infringements.
The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material – and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they grapple with a close-up inspection by environment officials from Beijing.
McEwen Copper, a subsidiary of McEwen Mining, on Monday announced two separate transactions that provide a significant financial boost for its Los Azules project, in Argentina.
The company announced that automaker and mobility group Stellantis had invested 30-billion Argentine peso (about $150-million) to acquire shares of McEwen Copper in a two-part transaction that closed last week.
The remote Ambler Mining District contains massive lodes of minerals essential to cleantech, but extracting them will likely make an ecological mess.
Coldfoot, Alaska, is a lone truck stop-cafe-bar-motel 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle. It’s the last spot for northbound semis to gas up on their way to Prudhoe Bay and a place where camo-clad hunters smelling to high hell eat stacks of burgers and swap stories while dead moose lie in pickups parked outside.
On one of Coldfoot’s brisk September mornings, a rumble grows into steady thunder. Man-made wind sends grit whipping across the dirt driveway where someone, a few weeks earlier, placed a wooden sign with red-stenciled letters: “Helicopter Parking Only.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The U.S. Department of Energy is providing Li-Cycle Holdings Corp. with a US$375-million loan to help it complete North America’s first major refinery for recycling battery-grade lithium, a major step in the Toronto-based company’s growth plans, it said on Monday.
Li-Cycle plans to start operations at its US$485-million Rochester processing hub in Western New York late this year. The project, located in Greece, N.Y., a suburb of Rochester, will include a plant that will use the company’s hydrometallurgical system to process up to 35,000 tonnes of black mass – e-waste from crushed and shredded battery cells – per year, for use in new lithium-ion batteries. That is equivalent to about 18 gigawatt-hours of battery capacity.
https://www.northernminer.com/
The growing demand for clean energy technologies is driving exploration and development of critical mineral deposits around the world. Here’s a look at eight companies on the hunt for everything from cobalt and copper to graphite, lithium and nickel.
ACME Lithium
ACME Lithium Inc. (CSE: ACME; US-OTC: ACLHF) is focused on battery metal projects and its flagship asset is the Clayton Valley lithium project in Esmeralda County, Nev., 145 km northwest of Las Vegas. ACME Lithium has the option to earn 100% of 122 claims of the 9.9-sq.-km project, which sits contiguous to the northwest of Albemarle’s (NYSE: ALB) Silver Peak lithium mine, and borders Pure Energy Metals’ Clayton Valley lithium brine project, a joint-venture with Schlumberger Technology Corp.
OTTAWA, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Canada has the firepower to invest billions of dollars in the green transition over the coming years to make it more competitive with the United States, analysts said, while also ensuring its public finances stay on a sustainable path.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has fiscal room in this year’s budget because tax revenue has held up, COVID-19 pandemic supports have ended and the economy is performing better than previously expected, said Randall Bartlett, senior director of Canadian economics at Desjardins.
China’s lithium industry is reeling as its top production hub — responsible for around a 10th of the world’s supply — faces sweeping closures amid a government probe of environmental infringements.
The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, follows a local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced to feed rampant demand for the battery material — and to benefit from record global prices. Now, they’re grappling with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent from Beijing.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Magna Mining pushing the boundaries to find additional resources at Crean Hill and Shakespeare mines
Magna Mining, an aspiring metals producer in Sudbury, has tapped into a new mineral zone near the surface at the site of a former Inco mine.
The local company launched a drill program this winter to look into how much life is left in the once-producing Crean Hill mine on the southeast corner of the Sudbury basin.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/
Reducing reliance on personal vehicles, more public transit can cut emissions faster: author
The growing need for lithium — a mined metal used in batteries to power electric vehicles (EVs) — could have significant international environmental and social impacts if the U.S. doesn’t reimagine its transportation policy, according to a recent report.
Lithium, listed as a “critical mineral” by several governments and agencies, is an integral part of the transition away from fossil fuels. While demand is exploding because of EVs, it’s also used in batteries for energy storage systems, and smaller products like smartphone and e-bike batteries.
As demand soars for electric vehicles and clean energy storage, Australia is rising to meet much of the world’s demand for lithium. While this helps reduce the need for fossil fuels, it raises another question – how can we source lithium sustainably?
Roughly a three-hour drive south of Perth, Western Australia, off the South Western Highway and behind the historic mining town of Greenbushes, the land beyond the town’s primary school falls away to reveal a deep, grey scar.
This is the site of an old tin mine known as the Cornwall Pit. At roughly 265m (870ft) deep, the terraced wall of the pit represents a century’s worth of work that began in 1888 when a pound of tin was lifted out of a nearby creek. When the surface-metal was scoured from the landscape, methods changed eventually giving way to open-cut mining in the host pegmatite vein – an igneous rock with a coarse texture similar to granite.
