Archive | Copper

The U.S. has grand ambitions to conquer the global EV market — it can’t win without Canada – – by Ryan Castilloux (Financial Post – June 16, 2021)

June 17, 2021 in Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles, Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals, Copper, Graphite Mining, Lithium, Nickel

https://financialpost.com/

Ryan Castilloux is managing director of Adamas Intelligence, which provides research on strategic materials and minerals.

A US$174-billion U.S. plan to spur domestic production and sales of U.S.-made electric vehicles while bolstering domestic supply chains, from raw materials to parts, dovetails with allies Canada and Australia’s ambitions to become leading suppliers of raw materials to parts.

The plan is part of the massive US$2-trillion spending plan unveiled by U.S. President Joe Biden in March, that aims at creating millions of “good jobs,” rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and positioning the U.S. to “out-compete China.”

From a raw materials perspective, there are four main facets of interest for the Canadian auto sector in the U.S.’s grand ambition to win the EV market. Continue Reading →

Teck on track to double copper output by 2023, Don Lindsay says – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – June 14, 2021)

June 15, 2021 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper

Global mining news

Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A/TECK-B; NYSE: TECK) is preparing to double its copper output by 2023 to take advantage of accelerated metal demand from global economic growth and the transition to a lower-carbon economy, president and CEO Don Lindsay tells The Northern Miner.

The mining executive says Teck is well-positioned to benefit from the anticipated growth in global copper demand of 2.3 times by 2050. The company has a growth initiative in place at each of its core copper operations comprising four operating mines — Highland Valley in Canada, Antamina in Peru, Carmen de Andacollo in Chile and Quebrada Blanca, also in Chile.

“These mines have a ten-year average gross profit margin of 47% and place us amongst the lowest carbon intensity copper producers,” he says in an interview. Continue Reading →

Andrew Forrest’s $100b Congo power play – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – June 13, 2021)

June 14, 2021 in Africa Mining, Australia/New Caledonia/Papua New Guinea Mining, Copper, International Media Resource Articles

https://www.afr.com/

“Fortescue will not work with those who intend to ship in thousands of workers
and ship them out once the project is completed,” he said. “We intend to upskill
the economies that we enter.”

Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest has secured the inside running on developing the world’s largest hydro power project – which alone carries a $US80 billion ($103.8 billion) price tag – and associated port, green hydrogen and green ammonia capability in the troubled Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dr Forrest said Fortescue’s green energy and green hydrogen projects in Africa were not confined to the DRC and included projects in Kenya and Ethiopia, with investors and financiers already indicating a willingness to commit more than $US100 billion.

He put Fortescue’s weight behind the Grand Inga dam project on the Congo on Sunday as part of his ambition to diversify the iron ore miner into a global force in green energy and green hydrogen. Continue Reading →

Copper Is The New Gold For U.S. Ammo Makers And The Chinese Companies They’re Competing With For Scarce Supplies – by Aaron Smith (Forbes Magazine – June 10, 2021)

June 10, 2021 in Copper, International Media Resource Articles, Metals and Manufacturing

https://www.forbes.com/

U.S. ammunition makers are competing with Chinese companies for copper, a metal that is essential for building construction and the manufacture of electronics.

Gun sales are continuing to accelerate to record heights during the coronavirus pandemic, as Americans arm themselves for self-protection against an increasingly scary world with civil unrest and rising crime. Guns need ammunition, and making it requires raw materials like gunpowder, brass for the shells and copper for the bullets.

“Copper is very big for us,” said Vista Outdoor Chief Executive Officer Chris Metz in a recent interview. Copper is part of a soft zinc alloy that jackets the lead bullet to protect the inside of the gun barrel when firing. But copper is also an important ingredient in keeping the lights on around the world, and in running our computers and phones. Continue Reading →

Mining Companies Call Themselves Green in Push for Investor Cash – by Scott Patterson (Wall Street Journal – June 8, 2021)

June 10, 2021 in Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles, Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals, Copper, International Media Resource Articles, Lithium, Nickel, Nickel Laterites

https://www.wsj.com/

Mining companies are trying to tap into the flood of cash targeting green investments by touting their production of materials that go into wind turbines, power lines and batteries.

They are playing down the environmental impact of their operations and, for many of them, their big businesses mining coal.

The International Energy Agency said in a May report that while coal mining will decrease dramatically in the coming years, “the mining of minerals needed for clean energy transitions increases very rapidly” in a global economy focused on bringing down carbon emissions. Continue Reading →

Copper Riches Are in Cross-Hairs of Chile Presidential Hopeful – by Valentina Fuentes and Eduardo Thomson (Bloomberg News – June 10, 2021)

June 10, 2021 in Copper, International Media Resource Articles, Latin America Mining

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The man who early polling suggests will be Chile’s next president plans to raise mining taxes in coordination with neighboring nations and take equity stakes in copper mines in a bid to retain more mineral wealth.

Daniel Jadue, the current front-runner in polls for November’s elections in Chile, wants to align mining rules with Peru, Argentina and Bolivia so they don’t compete for investments, he said in an interview Wednesday.

Like Indonesia has done, he also plans to renegotiate with foreign companies to take stakes in their assets in what would be the industry’s biggest disruption since U.S.-owned mines were nationalized to form Codelco in the 1970s. Continue Reading →

World needs Congo copper to kick fossil fuels, Friedland says – by James Attwood, Erik Schatzker and Michael J. Kavanagh (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2021)

June 8, 2021 in Africa Mining, Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

An African nation emerging from decades of conflict and corruption holds the key to greening the global economy.

That’s the view of mining magnate Robert Friedland, whose Kamoa-Kakula venture just started producing copper in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

After scouring 59 countries over more than three decades, the Canadian billionaire says Congo has the world’s best deposits of the metal used in everything from electric cars to solar panels and power grids. Continue Reading →

Glencore preparing to go deeper than deep at Timmins’ Kidd Mine – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – June 8, 2021)

June 8, 2021 in Canadian Regional Media and Web Publications, Copper, Glencore, Ontario Mining, Timmins, Zinc, Lead and Tin

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Feasibility study to be start on another expansion to world’s deepest base metal operation

After 55 years, the world’s deepest base metal mine looks to still have some life yet.

Glencore Canada is spending US$44 million on drilling and a feasibility study in preparing for another deep mine expansion at Kidd Mine near Timmins Kidd’s current life of mine runs out at the end of 2023 but Glencore management and technical staff have been working to extend it.

Known as Mine 5, Glencore said they’ve put 89,000 metres of drilling into the ore body and have queued up a new round of 87,000 metres once safety protocols are put in place. Continue Reading →

Copper boom: how clean energy is driving a commodities supercycle – by Neil Hume and Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – June 8, 2021)

June 8, 2021 in Copper, International Media Resource Articles

https://www.ft.com/

Kamoa-Kakula in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a rare commodity in the modern resources industry: a high-grade copper mine that one day could produce enough metal to satisfy more than 5 per cent of China’s annual demand.

Surrounded by small villages, the mine employs around 7,000 workers and has its own road for trucks to carry rock to a nearby smelter. The company is also upgrading a 40-year-old hydropower station on the Congo River to provide electricity to run the mine.

The first phase of the $2bn project began operating in May, more than four years after the last big copper mine of similar scale, MMG’s Las Bambas, in Peru, came online. Continue Reading →

120 year chart shows copper price supercycle only starting – by Frik Els (Mining.com – June 2, 2021)

June 4, 2021 in Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper

https://www.mining.com/

While hedge funds have gone soft on copper, the metal continues to trade within striking distance of all-time highs, but whether this is as good as it gets or just the beginning of a supercycle for the bellwether metal is far from settled.

The uberbull camp – led by Goldman Sachs – has seen its ranks grow and the predictions of inveterate contrarians like Goehring & Rozencwajg Associates of $30,000 copper no longer seem outlandish.

Copper and mining’s central role in the green energy transition has been well documented and as BMO’s Colin Hamilton put it with exquisite understatement in a recent report: Continue Reading →

Glencore approves further drilling in hopes of extending Kidd mine life – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – June 4, 2021)

June 4, 2021 in Canadian Regional Media and Web Publications, Copper, Glencore, Ontario Mining, Timmins, Zinc, Lead and Tin

https://www.timminspress.com/

$50M feasibility study to be completed by end of 2022

Glencore Canada is investing more than $50 million on a drilling and feasibility program aimed at extending mine life at Kidd Operations. The mine is currently projected to wind down by end of 2023. However, hopes remain alive that operations may extend beyond that.

Last week, the company advised staff that the next phase of drilling and feasibility was approved for what has been dubbed the Mine 5 project, Alexis Segal, Glencore’s head of corporate communications told The Daily Press Thursday night. Continue Reading →

Copper roars past $4.60 as resource nationalism grips market – by Richard (Rick) Mills – Kitco News – June 1, 2021)

June 2, 2021 in Asia Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper, Latin America Mining, Nickel, Nickel Laterites

https://www.kitco.com/

A number of happenings in the copper market conspired to elevate the spot price beyond $4.60 a pound on Thursday, confirming Ahead of the Herd’s suspicions that a new wave of resource nationalism in some of the largest copper-producing nations is washing over the sector.

Resource nationalism is the tendency of governments to assert control, for strategic and economic reasons, over natural resources located on their territories. It has been identified as one of the key risks for investors in the natural resources space.

With the copper price soaring on tight supply and heavy demand, as the world’s biggest economies revive following a year of coronavirus-related restrictions, the temptation for producer nations to cash in on more valuable copper reserves to pay for social programs is proving hard to resist. Continue Reading →

Championing a Green Energy Revolution through High-Grade Cu-Ni-Co-Zn Projects in the World’s Best Mining Jurisdictions – by Stephen Mlot, P.Eng (June 2, 2021)

June 2, 2021 in Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals, Copper, Manitoba Mining, Nickel, Quebec Mining, Zinc, Lead and Tin

Murchison Minerals Limited (TSXV: MUR) is a company founded by industry veterans and following a plan for discovering and building resources for the Green Energy Revolution through high-grade Cu-Zn and Ni-Co projects in Canada’s best mining jurisdictions.

Murchison is operating in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec, based on those provinces’ rich variety of metal deposits, as well as the positive fiscal and operational environment for mineral exploration and development. In its 2020 Annual Survey of Mining Companies the Fraser Institute ranks those jurisdictions as the top two in Canada and in the top ten globally.

The Green Energy future is not just about electric vehicles and battery power. Clean energy goes beyond this to include Wind, Solar, Hydrogen Energy Cells, Geothermal and even Nuclear. Other drivers of the future will be the electrification of everything, the 5G interconnection of devices (managed by AI systems), and energy-efficient systems. Continue Reading →

Is Ivanhoe’s Western Foreland DRC’s next major copper discovery? – by Chantelle Kotze (Mining Review Africa – May 28, 2021)

May 31, 2021 in Africa Mining, Canada Mining, Copper, International Media Resource Articles

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Canadian mining company Ivanhoe Mines’ Western Foreland exploration licences, located to the west of the tier-one Kamoa-Kakula copper project, is a key pipeline asset for the company, which it believes can yield additional high-grade copper discoveries within the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Despite being focused on executing construction and development activities at the Kamoa-Kakula, Platreef and Kipushi projects, the company has exploration in its DNA and company founder and executive co-chair, Robert Friedland, is always in search of the next world-scale discovery, writes CHANTELLE KOTZE.

Having amassed a wealth of geological and related technical information about the Western Foreland region during the discovery and advancement of the nearby Kamoa-Kakula project, Ivanhoe Mines has spent the past two years securing the various exploration licenses that now make up the Western Foreland exploration project. Continue Reading →

Biggest copper mining project in decades begins production – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – May 26, 2021)

May 26, 2021 in Africa Mining, Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper

https://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) has begun producing copper concentrate at its Kamoa-Kakula project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) months ahead of schedule as the metal continues to trade close to all-time highs.

Kakula, the first mine planned at the concession, is initially forecast to generate 3.8 million tonnes of ore a year at an average feed grade “well in excess of 6% copper” over the first five years of operation, the company said.

Ivanhoe and partner Zijin Mining said first ore was introduced into the concentrator plant on May 20 to perform initial hot commissioning tests on the ball mills and other processing equipment. Continue Reading →