(Bloomberg) — Gold investors returning from their summer holidays will be eager to see whether the precious metal can sustain its record-breaking rally, or if it will succumb to the curse of September.
Bullion has dropped every September since 2017. Over that period, the average decline has been 3.2% in September – easily the worst month of the year, and far below the monthly average gain of 1%.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The framework for nurturing junior companies through Canadian stock markets has been largely gutted
From the start, ZS2 Technologies Ltd. was built to go public. The Calgary-based business was founded by stock market veterans who put in place the building blocks of a publicly traded company: governance, oversight and financial reporting. When the time was right, an initial public offering would provide the exposure and capital to take it to the next level.
But the plan has changed. ZS2 is no longer destined for the Toronto Stock Exchange. ZS2 specializes in high-tech, sustainable building materials. Demand comes mostly from the U.S. construction industry. There is talk of manufacturing stateside, where ZS2 recently incorporated. There are tax advantages to consider. And calls are coming in from U.S. investors hunting for promising growth stories.
Chile’s state-run miner Codelco on Tuesday made a $500 million offer to buy a 10% stake in the Quebrada Blanca copper mine, controlled by Canada’s Teck Resources, from Enami, another Chilean state miner.
Quebrada Blanca’s expansion – QB2 – is ramping up with a target set by Teck of 285,000 – 315,000 tonnes of annual production by 2026. QB2 reached production of 51,300 tonnes in the second quarter this year, up more than 18% from Q1.
Stage 1 of BHP’s multi-billion dollar Jansen potash mine project is halfway complete and ahead of schedule, the company announced last week. The project is being built just outside of Humboldt, and will be part of a multi-stage effort to build the largest potash mine in the world.
The first stage is expected to be complete by 2026. Karina Gistelinck is the asset president of potash for BHP and also in charge of overseeing the mega project. She was nothing but smiles on Tuesday in Saskatoon speaking about how well construction had progressed on the project.
(Bloomberg) — Poland is seeking to amend plans for utilities to spin off their coal assets, according to the minister in charge of managing state assets.
The European Union’s most coal-dependent nation has struggled with its energy transition, with the previous administration failing to complete a plan to separate the coal assets from utilities and move them to a separate entity — known as NABE — all in one go.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Algoma Steel Inc.’s smokestacks have been a fixture on the bank of the St. Marys River at the eastern end of Lake Superior for more than a century. Its mill has played a crucial role churning out an essential ingredient for the country’s industrialization as well as jobs for generations in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
That’s meant long-term benefits, as the company provided the region with employment and an economic base. But with that has come uncertainty during a number of flirtations with bankruptcy as steel markets gyrated. The use of coal in its blast furnaces triggered climate-warming emissions along with health concerns among nearby residents.
(Kitco News) – Commodities are often seen as a safer go-to investment than stocks during times of economic strife as they make up the base materials that fuel the engines of society, but according to Goldman Sachs, the current environment is risky for most popular commodities, and gold offers the best protection against the loss of value.
“We strongly believe in the diversifying role of commodities in investment portfolios based on several structural drivers, including commodities’ hedging role against supply disruptions, not an uncommon occurrence in energy, and the potential for sharp rallies in select industrial metals driven by a combination of long supply cycles and structural green metals demand growth associated with energy security and decarbonization investment,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in their recent commodities update.
https://www.northernminer.com/
As we look in the waning days of summer to the United States’ Southwest in this edition, it strikes us that there’s been a staggering number of days that only saw three mines start production in Canada’s southern neighbour.
It’s something like 6,600 days – or 18 years – according to a recent study by S&P Global. The most recent major approval for a new mine now in production is Lundin Mining’s nickel-copper Eagle mine in northern Michigan, which began commercial output in 2013, more than a decade ago.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
In 1937’s Oshawa GM strike, The Globe’s publisher backed the losing side – but didn’t interfere with a newsroom whose labour coverage would change radically in the decades to follow
In April, 1937, at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont., workers frantically scrambled to move hundreds of cars off the factory floor, working all night at the command of their managers. The cars were lined up and then driven along a highway leading to Toronto – 75 cars an hour, travelling through the night. These same workers, up to 3,000 of them, were poised to go on strike the next day, forming picket lines around the soon-to-be-empty plant.
The remnants of the Depression lingered: a lagging economy and fast-declining social conditions. Almost a third of the labour force had been out of work, and a fifth had depended on government support merely to survive. Workers were frustrated, and unions capitalized on that anger, leading the charge in demanding higher wages and shorter work hours.
‘I don’t see how a municipality could survive when 600 citizens are out of work. I can’t imagine that,’ Lise Boulianne said
OTTAWA — The mayor of Sacré-Coeur, a small village of 1,700 people in northern Quebec, says her municipality would empty out and could become a “ghost town” if federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault were to pass his decree to save the woodland caribou in Quebec.
In an appearance before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, Mayor Lise Boulianne called on the minister to change his mind and abandon the plan.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/
Industry says provincial government is hindering its efforts
A year after Nova Scotia’s only active gold mine shut down, people in the industry say the provincial government is standing in the way of eager prospectors. Others, including environmentalists and Mi’kmaq, are opposed to any new mines and are hoping the closure marks the end of the province’s long history of gold production.
St Barbara, an Australian firm, is the main player in Nova Scotia’s modern gold rush. The company owns the Touquoy mine, which operated from 2017 to 2023, and the company has a vision for three more open-pit gold mines along the Eastern Shore.
BHP’s relationship with its Western Australian nickel operations has been something of an on-and-off affair. In 2014, Melbourne-based BHP excluded Nickel West from its South32 spin-off, created to house the company’s non-core assets. Today South32 is worth $9.5 billion, 50% more than on its debut, and senior management in Perth may well feel that in the end that was a blessing.
Later that year the world’s top mining company, more than $30 billion clear of its nearest rival, also waved away bidders for Nickel West, said to be Glencore and Chinese nickel group Jinchuan, in a sale put as high as $1 billion.
(Bloomberg) — A senior US State Department official reassured African governments that an initiative to help counter China’s influence through developing infrastructure on the continent will continue even after a change in administration.
The flagship of the plan — a railway project known as the Lobito corridor that connects copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to an Atlantic port in Angola — is already far advanced, Helaina Matza, acting special coordinator for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, told reporters on Wednesday.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Relationships are evolving quickly between Indigenous communities and Canadian businesses seeking to develop energy and natural-resource projects on their territories – and that’s boosting demand for specialized legal know-how.
In past decades, oil, mining and pipeline companies often sought to push their developments through by designing them in-house, then seeking support and access agreements from First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. If they got pushback, some offered financial incentives or ownership stakes, and the results were hit or miss. Some of the misses were extremely costly.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/
Lomiko Metals wants to build graphite mine about 80 km northeast of Gatineau
People living near the site of a proposed graphite mine in the Outaouais will get a chance to have their say in a referendum, but not for more than a year. An alliance of local municipalities announced on Sunday during a public information session in Chénéville, Que., that the vote will take place Nov. 2, 2025.
Chénéville is among the towns surrounding the proposed La Loutre site, located about 80 kilometres northeast of Gatineau. The alliance also includes Duhamel, Lac-Simon, St-Émile-de-Suffolk and Lac-des-Plages.
