(Bloomberg) — Specialty metals refiner Umicore SA is enjoying record profits as battery materials boom, but the company is racing to avert a slowdown in sales as its cobalt-heavy chemicals fall out of favor with carmakers.
The Brussels-listed company, which has been refining cobalt for more than 100 years, says the burgeoning electric-vehicle industry is switching to high-nickel batteries far faster than expected. Now Umicore is racing to do the same.
Electric vehicle (EV) battery start-up Britishvolt, which has the ambitious plan to build a recycling gigafactory in the UK, has secured a £40 million ($54 million) cornerstone investment from partner Glencore (LON: GLEN).
The miner and commodities trader’s backing is part of Britishvolt’s £200 million Series C fundraising led by Bank of America, which launched Tuesday, the company said.
The deal went through swiftly – and almost immediately prompted calls for a national security review. Just three months after Chinese-state-owned Zijin Mining Group announced its US$960 million plans to buy Canadian miner Neo Lithium, the proposal was signed, screened and delivered.
At a corporate level, the deal made sense. Neo Lithium’s biggest mine operation is in Argentina, where Zijin already has interests and plans to build a lithium carbonate plant. Canadian officials also said carmakers in North America were unlikely to use lithium produced so far away.
LONDON, Feb 15 (Reuters) – The lithium supply crunch has arrived in full force. The price boom of 2016-2017, it’s now clear, was just the dry run. This is the real deal.
Back in November 2017 the spot price for battery-grade lithium carbonate in China peaked at 175,000 yuan per tonne. Fastmarkets currently assesses it at 400,000-430,000 yuan, up 47% on the start of the year and eight times higher than it was at the start of 2021.
A group of investors is betting that the $1.6tn global mining industry is set to undergo the sort of digital disruption that upended the media, music and automotive industries.
T Rowe Price, Bond Capital and a dozen other investors have raised $192mn for a Bill Gates-backed start-up called Kobold Metals, which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to find new deposits of critical metals needed for batteries and clean energy.
(Bloomberg) — Lithium’s vital role in electric-vehicle batteries means automakers, miners and investors are racing to figure out how much supply the world will need in the coming years — and also how much it’s going to get. The problem is the predictions vary wildly.
The metal’s price has surged fivefold in the past year, reflecting mounting worries about availability. For years, batteries and EVs have become cheaper to make as the technology improved and production stepped up. But now there’s a risk that rising costs of raw materials — and lithium in particular — could hobble the transition just as momentum picks up.
The Biden administration recently canceled a proposed mine. While environmentalists celebrated, it shows how hard it is to build a domestic supply of the minerals needed to switch to a green economy.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
The transition to a low-carbon future will require a lot of metals like copper, nickel and lithium to build everything from solar panels to electric car batteries. The Biden administration’s recent decision to block a proposed mine in Minnesota shows just how tough it could be to develop a domestic supply for those metals. Dan Kraker of Minnesota Public Radio reports.
(Kitco News) – According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in 2021, global production of natural graphite was estimated to have increased by 4% to 1,000,000 tonnes from 2020 production of 966,000 tonnes.
With 820,000 tonnes of natural graphite mined in 2021, China was the world’s leading graphite producer, producing an estimated 82% of total world output.
A Florida congressman says he’s pressing the Biden administration on Canada’s decision to skip an extended national security review of a Chinese state-owned company’s takeover of a lithium mining firm.
“It was quite surprising to me to hear of this acquisition, given there’s a clear national security nexus and I would think there’s clear national security concerns,” Florida Rep. Michael Waltz (R) told POLITICO. “Not just any acquisition — but from a Chinese state-owned firm is, again, very surprising and very alarming.”
(Bloomberg) — Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is ratcheting up nationalistic rhetoric around the country’s untapped lithium deposits, signaling private capital isn’t welcome in the industry.
Unlike other metals such as gold and silver, lithium is a strategic mineral like oil that belongs to the nation, AMLO, as the populist president is known, told reporters in Mexico City on Wednesday, announcing plans to create a state lithium company.
A World Bank report recently forecasted that we would need more than 3 billion tons of metals and minerals to limit the rise in global temperatures by 2 degrees by 2050. That’s more than 3 billion tons in raw materials for solar, wind, and battery storage.
The World Bank is not the only one. The International Monetary Fund reported in December that the future demand for metals and minerals may well top the current global supply. The IMF also said that “The needed ramp-up in mining investment and operations could be challenging.”
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The Federal Industry Ministry is under fire from security experts for being vague about the length of its security screening of Chinese-state-owned Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd.’s acquisition of Canadian lithium development company Neo Lithium Corp.
As a domestic company being acquired by a foreign buyer, Neo Lithium was subject to a review by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), to determine whether the transaction threatened Canadian national security. A review can start as soon as the government becomes aware of a deal.
The Liberals must stop rewarding Beijing’s unconscionable behaviour
For some time now, it has seemed as if Canada’s foreign policy approach toward China has been similar to that old Abbott and Costello baseball shtick of “Who’s on First?”
That is to say, Ottawa’s strategy, insofar as one can even call it that, has been a circular, confusing and nonsensical parody. The major difference is, clearly, there is no humour to be found; rather, this comedy of errors carries only dire consequences for Canada.
Northern Ontario’s mining industry could be a major player in the goal of reducing reliance on China as North America moves towards a greener economy, but more support, and a long-term vision, from policy makers will be needed.
This week, Brendan Marshall, vice-president of Economic and Northern Affairs with the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) was the guest speaker for the latest State of Mining virtual meeting hosted by the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.
How can Canada build a lithium supply chain or any other critical mineral for that matter, when it allows the assets of Canadian companies to be acquired’
China buying a Canadian lithium mining company is part of a wider strategy by the Chinese to become “dominant in global high-tech manufacturing,” an analyst told a parliamentary committee Wednesday.
“Securing access to lithium and other critical mineral reserves is essential to the achievement” of that industrial policy, said Jeff Kucharski, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and adjunct professor at Royal Roads University.
