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Cobalt, Critical, Strategic and Rare Earth Minerals and Metals

Meet the Canadian miner that plans to shake up the nickel industry – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – August 25, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

If Royal Nickel Canada succeeds, it would show how Chinese demand for raw materials can stimulate the expansion of Canadian mining

To hear Mark Selby tell it, the Canadian nickel industry is actually an “oligopoly,” in which a few large companies control the smelters, and grab an outsized share of the profits.

Selby, chief executive of Toronto-based Royal Nickel Corp., which is raising money to build a mine in Quebec, thinks he can break that pattern.

On Thursday, his company announced it has devised a way to reverse-engineer a product that resembles nickel pig iron — a lower grade, cheaper form of the metal derived from ores found in tropical areas.

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Blood, Sweat, and Batteries – by Vivienne Walt and Sebastian Meyer (Fortune Magazine – August 23, 2018)

http://fortune.com/

Two-thirds of the world’s cobalt, an essential ingredient in our smartphones and electric cars, comes from one of the planet’s poorest countries. All too often it is mined by children.

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

MOST OF HIS NEIGHBORS are still sound asleep at 5 a.m., when Lukasa rises to begin his 12-hour workday. The slender 15-year-old, with an oval face and piercing stare, slips out of his family’s mud-brick home before dawn six days a week. Then he makes the two-hour walk from his tiny village in the southern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a government-owned mining site.

(Fortune is withholding the name of the village in order to protect Lukasa and other children.) Once at the mine, Lukasa spends eight hours hacking away in a hole to accumulate chunks of a mineral that is crucial to keeping our modern lives moving: cobalt.

By about 3 p.m., Lukasa has filled a sack with his day’s haul. He hoists the load, which can weigh up to 22 pounds, on his back and lugs it for an hour by foot to a trading depot. “I sell it to Chinese people,” he says, referring to the buyers from Chinese commodity trading companies who dominate the market in the area.

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Quebec government opens vault for mining project: Chibougamau iron, vanadium deposit attracts $248 million in provincial funding – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – August 23, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

The Quebec government is dropping a combined $248 million to assist a major mining project, processing plant and port improvements in the central part of the province.

The provincial government is providing $185 million in financial assistance to BlackRock Metals of Montreal to support the development of an open-pit mine of iron, vanadium and titanium near Chibougamau in the Nord-du-Québec region.

The funding is earmarked toward setting up a secondary processing plant in the Grande-Anse section of the industrial port area of Saguenay.

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NEWS RELEASE: VanadiumCorp applauds the Government of Québec $248 million investment in the BlackRock Metals project and the development of the Grande-Anse Sector

VANCOUVER, Aug. 22, 2018 /CNW/ – VanadiumCorp Resource Inc. (TSX “VRB”) (the “Company”) applauds the announcement made yesterday in Saguenay, Quebec, Canada outlining investment in the Blackrock Metals project. VanadiumCorp owns 100% of the Lac Dore Vanadium Project adjacent to Blackrock Metals permitted mining project near Chibougamau, Quebec, Canada.

News release below from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy, Science and Innovation and Minister responsible for the Digital Agenda:

The Government of Québec is providing a total of $185 million in financial assistance to BlackRock Metals to support the construction of an open pit mine of iron, vanadium and titanium near Chibougamau, in the Nord-du-Québec region. This financial assistance is also aimed at setting up a secondary processing plant in the Grande-Anse sector of the industrial port area of Saguenay.

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Electric cars: the race to replace cobalt – by Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – August 20, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

Manufacturers want batteries that are not dependent on metals from unstable parts of the world

In a laboratory on an industrial park an hour’s drive outside Boston, Tufts professor Michael Zimmerman is hoping a material he invented in his basement can help solve a crisis facing the electric car industry — which has inadvertently tied its fortunes to one of the poorest and least stable countries in the world.

In between his teaching, Mr Zimmerman runs start-up Ionic Materials, whose battery material could mark the future for the car industry as it races to go electric after a century of producing petrol cars. His hope is that his homegrown prototype could pave the way for a new generation of batteries that does not use cobalt, a silver-grey metal, more than 60 per cent of which is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Backed by highly respected computer scientist and investor Bill Joy, who spent years searching for the perfect battery, Ionic counts the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi carmaker alliance, Hyundai and French oil company Total among its shareholders.

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Ex Glencore bosses try to snatch nickel asset – by Sarah Thompson and Anthony Macdonald (Australian Financial Review – August 19, 2018)

https://www.afr.com/

Mining giants Glencore and Barrick could have a prospective nickel and cobalt project taken from under their nose, if plans being hatched by ASX-listed Jervois Mining come to fruition.

As first reported by Street Talk on Sunday, Jervois has been making moves to win control of the Kabanga nickel and cobalt project in Tanzania, after the host government cancelled Glencore and Barrick’s joint hold of it in January.

The January cancellation was part of a broader push by the government to get a bigger share of its mineral wealth, but Glencore and Barrick have been upbeat in recent times about their chances of winning a fresh permit to explore and develop the asset.

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Search Minerals aims for larger rare earth elements mine in Labrador (CBC News Newfoundland and Labrador – August 19, 2018)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/

Company wants to mine elements for permanent magnets, electric cars

The company behind a proposed mining project in southeast Labrador hopes its project is much larger than originally thought with the capacity for more production for a growing industry.

Search Minerals has been working in Labrador since 2010 and wants to mine for rare earth minerals near the community of St. Lewis in two deposits the company calls Foxtrot and Deep Fox.

The company’s president and CEO Greg Andrews says they have already found more than a decade of mine life in the Foxtrot deposit, but the second deposit could more than double that time.

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Battery Boom Revives World War II Cobalt Mines – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – August 14, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The giant rocky outcrop known by locals as La Cobaltera offers a glimpse into northern Chile’s mining past, and a hint of its future.

Slag from an ancient furnace is piled at the entrance of a mine shaft that hasn’t seen commercial activity since World War II. Inside, eucalyptus posts still support narrow tunnels, placed there by German engineers as a kind of alarm system: when they creaked it was a sign the tunnel might collapse.

Now the global hunt for cobalt, a key commodity in the electric-vehicle revolution, is rousing the sleepy community on the edge of Chile’s northern desert. Trucks are bouncing down the meandering dirt road from Freirina, carrying modern mining equipment to La Cobaltera.

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China Takes Control of Cobalt Mines as It Advances Its Battery Industry for Electric Vehicles – by Frank Fang (Epoch Times – August 14, 2018)

https://www.theepochtimes.com/

A new source of energy can be found at the forefront of electric-vehicle development in the 21st century, and China is beginning to dominate in controlling the world’s supply of this so-called new petroleum: the mineral cobalt. Cobalt is one of the key components of the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles (EVs).

While Japanese electric carmakers are struggling to acquire the mineral and called for government assistance during a July 24 industry meeting in Tokyo, Chinese companies have been able to control one of the world’s key sources: mines in the central African nation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is one of the world’s poorest countries.

More than half of the world’s cobalt originates from Congo, and China’s control of the cobalt industry is as if it “had total control over oil fields in the Middle East,” an unidentified official with Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told Nikkei.

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Murky waters: Deep-sea miners say they offer a clean, ethical way to harvest precious metals for a low-carbon future. Environmentalists aren’t convinced. – by Janet Davison (CBC News – August 5, 2018)

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/

They don’t look like much at first, the black, potato-shaped blobs that lie scattered on the seabed, deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. But as is so often the case, looks can be deceiving.

These nodules, and the metals that lie within them, are at the heart of a new and potentially lucrative mining frontier.

Metals like cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese have been mined on land for years, but going deep into the ocean to find them is becoming an increasingly tantalizing prospect. Companies like DeepGreen Metals and Nautilus Minerals — both with Canadian ties — have invested millions in preparation to raise the minerals from the seabed.

The metals in question are found in three sources: those potato-sized nodules; seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits around hydrothermal vents; and cobalt-rich crusts near underwater mountains.

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How U.S. tariffs on China minerals could hurt industry, consumers – by Tom Daly (Reuters U.S. – July 31, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on another $200 billion of Chinese goods threaten a niche trade in minor metals and rare earths used in everything from stomach remedies and jet engines to consumer electronics.

More than 6,000 items have been earmarked for a 10 percent import tariff, including – in some form – 32 of the 35 minerals the United States in May designated as “critical” to its economic and national security.

These minerals and products based on them accounted for well over $1 billion of U.S. imports from China in 2017, and traders warn U.S. consumers will end up paying a premium if tariffs are put in place, albeit one cushioned by the recent devaluation of the yuan.

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The cobalt blues: A rival closes in on Vancouver’s eCobalt amid delays and shareholder backlash – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 31, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

The more cobalt prices rise, the more pressure companies with cobalt projects face. On Monday, Vancouver-based eCobalt Solutions Inc. found itself under siege from Australian rival Jervois Mining Ltd, which announced it has acquired 4.7 per cent of its shares — the potential rumblings of a hostile take over.

The announcement comes two days after Australian hedge fund Tribeca Investment Partners sent a stern letter to eCobalt’s board, rebuking its management for “unnecessary” delays and mistakes as it seeks to build a cobalt mine in Idaho.

The letter, obtained by the Financial Post from an industry insider, highlights the eCobalt’s struggling stock price, calling for a sale of the company and a change in management.

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Glencore Sees Big Jump in Cobalt Supply From Congo Mines – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – July 31, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Glencore Plc increased cobalt production by almost a third after restarting output at its Katanga unit in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Swiss commodity giant is seeking to double its production of cobalt in the next two years, tightening its grip on the market for the key battery material in electric vehicles. First-half cobalt output jumped 31 percent to 16,700 tons, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

While Glencore is cashing in on higher cobalt and copper demand, it also must confront serious challenges this year. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a corruption probe into operations in Congo, Nigeria and Venezuela, and it’s facing higher taxes and tougher regulation in Congo.

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Cobalt27’s Anthony Milewski discusses Vale transaction, cobalt outlook – by Trish Saywell (Northern Miner – July 3, 2018)

http://www.northernminer.com/

Cobalt27 Capital (TSXV: KBLT) recently acquired a US$300-million cobalt stream on Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Voisey’s Bay nickel-copper-cobalt mine, beginning in 2021. It also has a stream on the Ramu nickel-cobalt mine in Papua New Guinea owned by the Metallurgical Corp. of China, and a net smelter return royalty (NSR) on the construction-ready Dumont nickel-cobalt project owned by RNC Minerals (TSX: RNX) in Quebec.

In total the company has 12 streams and royalties, as well as physical cobalt. In the last five months alone the company has increased its physical stock of cobalt by 800 tonnes to 3,000 tonnes. The Northern Miner recently spoke with Cobalt27’s chairman and CEO, Anthony Milewski, about the company’s investments and his outlook for nickel and cobalt in the emerging electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

The Northern Miner: You have just completed a $300-million equity raise to pay for the cobalt stream in your portfolio from Voisey’s Bay mine in Labrador.

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Japan takes steps to ensure stable cobalt supply for automakers – by Yuka Obayashi (Reuters U.K. – July 24, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s automakers aim to set up a joint procurement body by end-March to secure stable supplies of cobalt, a key component of lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars, the country’s industry ministry said on Tuesday.

The move comes as global carmakers race to lock in battery supplies and move away from traditional combustion engines, and as China locks down supply chains to secure its own fast-growing battery sector.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry unveiled the plan at a committee set up by the ministry to map out the country’s plans for the auto industry, which includes Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T), Nissan Motor Co Ltd (7201.T) and Honda Motor Co Ltd (7267.T). The ministry and automakers will discuss details of the new organisation which is designed to help battery users secure long-term supplies of cobalt and buy clean materials with no issue of conflict minerals or child labour, it said.

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