Twitter

Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals

NEWS RELEASE: International Conference in Ottawa: Is Responsible Sourcing of Metals for Green Transition Possible?

(Ottawa, November 15, 2019 – recirculated) The environmental, social, and climate impacts of mining metals to meet the demands of the booming renewable energy economy are the focus of an international conference opening today in Ottawa. The non-profit group MiningWatch Canada aims to highlight the high environmental and social costs of mining and identify ways to reduce demand for newly mined metals as the world moves urgently away from fossil fuel energy.

The group says the impacts of mining are inadequately addressed as it is, and already acute impacts on communities and ecosystems will be dramatically worsened by projected manyfold increases in demand for metals and minerals to produce wind turbines, photovoltaic cells, electric vehicles and batteries, etc. that can only be partially offset by increased recycling and materials efficiency.

“We are already seeing serious damage to forests, watersheds, farmland, and people’s livelihoods and security from mining for these ‘energy metals’,” says MiningWatch communications coordinator Jamie Kneen. “We have to recognise that there are real limits to extraction. Communities and ecosystems alike are already struggling to deal with mining’s short and long term effects, and they are both signalling that they can’t sacrifice more.”

Read more

China in focus as West debates critical minerals challenge – by Barbara Lewis (Reuters U.S. – November 13, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Western powers will attend talks in Brussels next week on curbing China’s dominance of rare earths and other critical resources and EU officials will present their vision to create entire green supply chains.

The talks, on Nov. 19, have taken place annually for much of this decade, bringing together diplomats and industry representatives from the European Union, Japan and United States.

They have yet to weaken China’s power, especially over rare earths, and global trade tensions aggravate the situation. In a daily news briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said it was not possible to “guide or monopolize” a certain sector or market in a closely connected world.

Read more

Commentary: The collapse of American rare earth mining — and lessons learned – by Jeffery A. Green (Defense News – November 12, 2019)

https://www.defensenews.com/

Out in the Mojave Desert in California lies the Mountain Pass mine, once the world’s foremost supplier of valuable rare earth minerals — 17 elements deemed critical to modern society. In an age where China controls 80 percent of the global output of these minerals, it is strange to believe that a once-dominant source sits within the United States. Stranger still is the tale of how this mine came to supply the Chinese rare earths industry.

In 1952, Mountain Pass opened. First explored as a uranium deposit, it soon supplied rare earths for the electronic needs of the Cold War economy. Until the 1990s, it stood alone as the only major source of rare earths worldwide.

By 2002, however, the mine was defunct. In the eyes of the U.S. government and major manufacturers, it no longer made sense to acquire rare earths from a U.S. source subject to stringent environmental regulations.

Read more

China Sets Record Rare-Earth Mining Quota as Demand Rises (Bloomberg News – November 11, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

China set its annual rare-earth mining quota at the highest on record as domestic demand for the strategic materials, used in everything from electric vehicles to military hardware, increases.

The quota for six dominant producers, including China Northern Rare Earth Group High-Tech Co., was set at 132,000 tons for 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement on Friday. That compares with 120,000 tons in 2018 and is the highest in data going back to 2014.

The higher quota follows requests from major companies in the industry to allow more production to meet rising demand, said Zhang Rui, an analyst at state-run researcher Beijing Antaike Information Development Co.

Read more

Global cobalt mine output growth forecast to slow in 2020: Antaike (Reuters U.S. – November 6, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

YICHANG, China (Reuters) – Global cobalt mine output will increase at a slower rate next year than in 2019, providing some support for price of the chemical used in batteries for electric vehicles, research house Antaike said on Wednesday.

Cobalt production in 2020 forecast to rise by 5,000 tonnes, Antaike nickel analyst Joy Kong said. That would be a 3.5% increase to the 143,600 tonnes produced this year which would be less than the 2019 expected growth rate of 6.3%, she said.

Antaike predicts standard grade cobalt prices in 2020 at around $18 per pound, or around $40,000 a tonne, up from an average of $16 to $16.50 per pound in 2019, as private mining declines, Kong said in a presentation at the China International Nickel and Cobalt Forum in Yichang.

Read more

Cobalt market to avoid shortage despite Congo mine closure: Nornickel – by Anastasia Lyrchikova and Polina Devitt (Reuters U.S. – October 29, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Cobalt supply will remain robust despite a price slide that has already led to the closure of a major mine, Russia’s Norilsk Nickel said, as most is produced as a byproduct of more buoyant metals like nickel and copper.

Prices of the battery metal surged in 2017 and 2018 on expectations for an electric vehicle revolution, but have fallen this year due to excessive supply and the impact of the U.S.-China trade war.

They are now down 60% from their spring 2018 peak. In August global mining and trade giant Glencore said it would shutter its Mutanda mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo from year-end for two years due to low cobalt prices.

Read more

Health and safety bigger risks to artisanal miners that conflict minerals — report – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 22, 2019)

https://www.mining.com/

Risks related to occupational health and safety are more prevalent than human rights abuses and conflict financing among global artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM), a new study by German supply chain auditor RCS Global Group has found.

The group’s Better Mining platform, piloted as ‘Better Cobalt’ on a cobalt supply chain from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) revealed that 26% of all registered incidents in the past year were related to health and safety issues, while only 13% had to do rights abuses and minerals financing conflict.

The Berlin-based organization used mobile technology to gather data from from five separate ASM sites in DRC and Rwanda, focusing on informal and small miners digging for cobalt, copper and the so-called 3TG (gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten).

Read more

‘You don’t control your destiny’: Why Canada’s rare earth deposits are staying in the ground – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 17, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

China controls three-quarters of the global market and nobody, especially investors, wants to mess with that

Somewhere on the outskirts of Montreal, Kiril Mugerman, chief executive of Geomega Resources Inc., aims to build a recycling plant that can produce rare earth oxides — the obscure set of elements that recently emerged as a flash point in the U.S.-China trade war.

Turning to recycling marks an about-face from the original game plan for his company, which spent millions of dollars trying to prove it could mine rare earths from a patch of land in northern Quebec.

Its story encapsulates the scaling back that has occurred throughout the Canadian rare earths’ sector over the last decade, shrinking down from more than a hundred explorers to just a handful of companies, mostly studying opportunities downstream from mining, in areas such as refining or recycling.

Read more

Cobalt, Congo and the responsible investor – by Martin Grosskope (Globe and Mail – October 10, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Martin Grosskopf is a vice-president and portfolio manager at AGF Investments Inc.

There is a dark side to a brighter, cleaner and smarter future. It starts with lithium-ion batteries that contain cobalt, the material needed to power our new technologies, giving way to the 21st century’s version of the great gold rush as global giants such as China move to wrest control of the world’s supply.

These batteries are used in everything from our smartphones and laptops to electric vehicles (EVs) and have earned the “blood batteries” moniker because they are sometimes mined by children and other locals in unsafe conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The misery in which these so-called artisanal miners work, and their rising death toll, has thrust cobalt mining in the Congo into the international spotlight. The issue is also raising vexing questions for those with an interest in responsible investing.

Read more

China And The U.S. Fight Over Australian Rare Earths – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – October 9, 2019)

https://www.forbes.com/

The U.S. hunt for future supplies of rare earths and other critical minerals has led Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Australia this week where he might not get the reception he was expecting.

China is not only well entrenched in the Australian mining industry but an academic paper released to coincide with Ross’s visit suggest that China could be a more reliable source of project development capital for new mining projects.

Published by the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney the paper’s theme was whether there was scope for government intervention in rare earths, an industry dominated by China but important to many countries because rare earth elements have unique properties.

Read more

COLUMN-United States races to build critical minerals alliances – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – October 7, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s offer to buy Greenland didn’t go down well with either the inhabitants of the world’s largest island or with Denmark, which administers it as an autonomous territory.

The Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen described the idea as “absurd”, triggering a diplomatic fall-out as Trump decided to cancel a planned visit to Denmark.

The idea may be many things but, from a U.S. perspective, it is not “absurd”. There are two completely rational drivers for eyeing up Greenland – its strategic location for North Atlantic shipping and its untapped mineral reserves.

Read more

Investors bought Cobalt 27 for its massive stockpile — now they’re being asked to cash out just as cobalt prices are poised to surge – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 4, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., which raised hundreds of millions of dollars promoting cobalt — an obscure metal that’s increasingly in demand because of its use in electric vehicle batteries — announced a new proposal this week to ditch cobalt just as its price rises.

On Tuesday, the company said its largest shareholder Pala Investments Ltd. would offer $4 per share for the company’s cobalt assets up from its earlier $3.57 offer, and also give them equity in a new company, Nickel 28.

“We have responded to the concerns expressed by shareholders and believe we have delivered a significantly improved transaction,” Philip Williams, chairman of Cobalt 27’s special committee said in a press release.

Read more

Congo mine deploys digital weapons in fight against conflict minerals – by Aaron Ross and Barbara Lewis (Reuters U.S. – October 1, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

RUBAYA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – In a small shack overlooking muddy pits hewn out of eastern Congo’s rolling green hills, a government official puts a barcoded tag on a sack of ore rich in tantalum, a rare metal widely used in smartphones.

With a handheld device linked to a server in the cloud, the agent scans the barcode, uploading data including the sealed bag’s weight, when it was tagged, and by whom.

It’s the latest initiative in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to improve systems meant to show minerals entering global supply chains come from mines that don’t use child labor or fund warlords and corrupt soldiers.

Read more

Australia sees opportunity to boost critical minerals supply to U.S. – report (Reuters U.K. – September 30, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Australia has a fresh opportunity to supply the United States with critical minerals after recent changes to U.S. regulation aimed at cutting its dependence on China, an Australian government report showed on Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump in July signed five memoranda authorising U.S. Department of Defense funding to be directed to resources or technology “essential to the national defense” in a move aimed at shoring up domestic supplies.

That opens the door for the United States to offer project funding for rare earths, a group of 17 elements used in products ranging from lasers and military equipment to magnets found in consumer electronics, according to the report by Australia’s Trade and Investment Commission.

Read more

Canada ready to provide vital minerals to U.S., Trudeau says – by Robert Fife and Marieke Walsh (Globe and Mail – September 29, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says Canada is ready and willing to supply the United States with strategically important minerals used in consumer and industrial products as Washington steps up efforts to cut its dependence on China.

At a White House meeting in late June, Mr. Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to negotiate a joint strategy on mineral collaboration. The United States is also seeking alliances with Australia, Japan and the European Union, which also fear relying too much on China for these minerals.

“I brought up this at the top of my conversation in my last meeting with Donald Trump, where I highlighted that Canada has many of the rare-earth minerals that are so necessary for modern technologies,” Mr. Trudeau told a news conference on Monday in Toronto. The rare earths are 17 minerals used in high-tech and military products such as smartphones, electric cars and fifth-generation fighter jets.

Read more