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INSIGHT: Myanmar rebels disrupt China rare earth trade, sparking regional scramble – by Devjyot Ghoshal, Poppy Mcpherson, Amy Lv and Neha Arora (Reuters – March 27, 2025)

https://www.reuters.com/

When armed rebels seized northern Myanmar’s rare-earths mining belt in October, they dealt a blow to the country’s embattled military junta – and wrested control of a key global resource. By capturing sites that produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) rebels have been able to throttle the supply of minerals used in wind turbines and electric vehicles, sending prices of one key element skyward.

The KIA is seeking leverage against neighbouring China, which supports the junta and has invested heavily in rare earths mining in Myanmar’s Kachin state, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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Lots of mining left in Sudbury but there are challenges: Gord Gilpin – by Hugh Kruzel (Sudbury Star – March 21, 2025)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Vale’s director of Ontario Operations speaks to a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce luncheon

Sudbury has another hundred years of good mining left in its ore bodies but it will have to work to remain competitive in a difficult market for nickel, Vale’s director of Ontario Operations says. Gord Gilpin told the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce this week that Indonesia has flooded the world market with nickel, depressing the price of the mineral.

Gilpin made a parallel to the turbulent 1970s and 80s. “They (Indonesia) are the OPEC of nickel. They will set prices. We do expect it to balance out but in the short term, there is a surplus that is why pricing is under pressure.”

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Trump’s order to boost mining in the U.S. could end up helping Canadian companies – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 24, 2025)

https://financialpost.com/

Latest U.S. effort to reduce dependence on China for rare earths and critical minerals

Canadian mining insiders say their industry could ultimately benefit if United States President Donald Trump’s fixation on boosting his country’s production of minerals persists. Last Thursday, Trump invoked presidential emergency powers and signed an executive order “to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent” as a matter of national and economic security.

The order cites “our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” which some say is the U.S.’s latest effort to reduce its dependence on China, which controls large parts of the world’s rare earths and critical minerals supply chains.

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Gold dominates mining M&A again in 2024: S&P Global – by Staff (Mining.com – March 22, 2025)

https://www.mining.com/

Gold was once again the dominant theme of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals within the precious and base metals mining space in 2024, accounting for 70% of the year’s transaction count and total value, says S&P Global.

According to data tracked by S&P, the number of M&A transactions with gold as the primary resource metal more than doubled those in base metals at 43 (versus 19). The total transaction value was also nearly three times higher for gold at $19.31 billion, compared to $7.23 billion for base metals.

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Copper’s uber bull predicts new record on most-profitable-ever trade – by Jack Farchy and Mark Burton (Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg – March 24, 2025)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

One of the highest-profile copper bulls is back predicting new price records, as Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs drains global stocks and creates what he sees as unprecedented opportunities for trading profit.

Kostas Bintas became one of the best-known metals traders during his years building Trafigura Group’s copper book into the world’s largest, before his departure in late 2023. Now spearheading a push into metals at energy trader Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., he is again calling for copper to surge to record highs, up by as much as a third from current levels.

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High Teck: The Canadian miner’s reinvention as a critical-metals player—via its massive copper mine in Chile’s Andean foothills— could prove its undoing as an independent company – by Eric Reguly (ROB/Globe and Mail – March 24, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Canadian plan to evolve into global critical-metals player by opening one of the biggest copper mines in South America got off to an unlucky start. On Sept. 25, 1996, Frank Pickard, the Sudbury, Ont., native who was the CEO of Falconbridge, then one of Canada’s top two diversified mining companies (the other was Inco), boarded a small aircraft on the Chilean coast and flew to the Collahuasi mine in the Atacama Desert, in the far north of the country, in the Andean foothills near the Bolivian border.

Within minutes of stepping out at 4,400 metres (14,400 feet)—half the height of Everest—he was felled by a heart attack and died. He was 63. A retired mining engineer and consultant friend of mine, Jeffrey Franzen, who worked for a subsidiary of Falconbridge at the time, told me that based on the story he’d heard, Pickard’s failure to acclimatize before reaching the Andean heavens, where effective oxygen levels are far lower than those at sea level, probably triggered his death. (Legend says he was buried in a coffin made of nickel, Falconbridge’s main product, as was his wish.)

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Spain eyes boom in ‘neglected’ strategic mining sector – by Valentin Bontemps (CBS 19 News – March 20, 2025)

https://www.cbs19news.com/

Spain is aiming to tap its unexplored strategic mining resources as the European Union urgently seeks to ramp up production, but local resistance could frustrate the government’s plans. The European mining heavyweight has 2,600 mines generating 3.5 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in annual revenue and is the second-largest EU producer of copper and magnesite, but sector specialists believe its potential is largely untapped.

“Spain possesses huge wealth in its subsoil” and “must continue investigating” to quantify it, said Ester Boixereu, a geologist and natural resources specialist at the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain.

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Canada scraps federal review of large projects – by Colin McClelland (Northern Miner – March 23, 2025)

Global mining news

Canada’s federal government will permit major infrastructure and mining projects with provincial and territorial approvals alone, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday evening after meeting with the country’s 13 premiers.

“We will eliminate federal duplicative requirements by recognizing provincial assessments for major projects, the so-called mutual recognition,” Carney told reporters in Ottawa. “So, one project, one review, and we will work with the provinces and other stakeholders, Indigenous groups, to identify projects of national significance and accelerate the time frame to build them.”

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Indonesian watchdog demands prosecution for environmental crime ‘cartels’ – by Hans Nicholas Jong (Mongabay.com – March 14, 2025)

Mongabay – Conservation News

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s largest environmental group, Walhi, has filed a formal complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, accusing 47 companies of environmental destruction and corruption. The companies, which operate in industries like palm oil, mining and forestry, are accused of being responsible for 437 trillion rupiah ($26.5 billion) in state losses.

Based on field investigations and spatial analysis, Walhi says it has identified 18 forms of gratuities paid by the companies to officials in the 47 cases. In some of these cases, Walhi found that officials had approved the rescinding of forest status for certain areas by revising zoning plans, thereby allowing the companies to clear forests for their concessions.

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Australia’s lithium dream is fading. Can tax breaks revive it? – by Elouise Fowler and Mark Wembridge(Australian Financial Review – March 24, 2025)

https://www.afr.com/

The prime minister believes he can revive hopes of turning Australia into a minerals processing powerhouse. Is this anything other than wishful thinking?

The $1.2 billion lithium hydroxide refinery on the shores of Perth’s southern beaches was once heralded as vital to Australia’s dream of becoming a battery minerals processing powerhouse. Today, the Tianqi Lithium plant sits in an uneasy state – its expansion plans in tatters, its future bleak. Conveyor belts that once ferried lithium-rich rock to a 1000-degree kiln and onto a vat of chemicals lay idle for long periods at the start of the year.

Plans to double the size of the plant – a short drive from Perth in the industrial suburb of Kwinana – were shelved in January. High costs, low lithium prices, technical problems and unfavourable economics are conspiring to kill off the facility entirely, and with it another slice of Australia’s dream.

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Wab Kinew ignores Manitoba’s trillion-dollar critical minerals opportunity – by Kevin Klein (Winnipeg Sun – March 21, 2025)

https://winnipegsun.com/

While New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt and her Liberal government are making serious moves to capitalize on their province’s critical mineral resources, here in Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew and his NDP government are silent. Not a word. Not a dollar. Not even a photo op with a hardhat and shovel.

This is a missed opportunity on a scale that’s hard to ignore — unless, of course, you’re the NDP. On Wednesday, New Brunswick’s Natural Resources Minister John Herron stood in their legislature and said what every leader who takes economic growth seriously should be saying. He told his team to get a strategy together to mine their rich deposits of critical minerals.

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Quebec’s aluminum product producers are feeling the sting of Trump’s tariffs – by Nicolas Van Praet (Globe and Mail – March 22, 2025)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

There are roughly 1,700 companies shaping aluminum into components or finished products in Quebec, cranking out everything you can think of with the malleable metal – from ambulance doors to window frames. Half of them are based in the greater Montreal area. And all of them have one major problem at the moment: Donald Trump.

Industry groups have been warning for weeks of the pain to come from the U.S. President’s 25-per-cent tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel, which came into effect March 12. But on the factory floors of Quebec’s aluminum-product makers, and in the hallways and offices of manufacturers where net profit margins are typically in the single digits and payrolls rarely tally more than 200 employees, those warnings have become reality.

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WA’s need for EVs comes at a cost for mining towns – by Isabella Breda (Seattle Times – March 24, 2025)

https://www.seattletimes.com/

THACKER PASS, Nev. — Cody Davis is part of a global energy transition. He mined coal in North Dakota before taking a job at what’s slated to be one of the most productive lithium mines in the world. Davis says miners can help the world dig up resources it needs to expand energy production, including for renewables.

“Mining is what we do,” said Davis, the mine’s operations and safety manager. “Just take that skill set and it’s just a different mineral.” American coal mines are shutting down as coal-fired power plants are yanked offline, making way for cleaner sources of power. Washington state’s last remaining coal power plant in Centralia is set to shutter this year.

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Sudbury, Ont., mayor not fazed over what tariffs could mean for nickel mining – by Jonathan Migneault (CBC News Sudbury – March 21, 2025)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

The U.S. only has one nickel mine and it would take years to start new ones

Sudbury’s mayor says he’s not worried that an ongoing trade war between Canada and the United States will hurt the city’s nickel exports to the south.

“I believe critical minerals, which obviously we are endowed with here in Greater Sudbury, play a role to maybe bridge that divide that we are currently living with the U.S. administration,” said Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre. “For them to realize the importance that they can’t source this in the U.S.”

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Prime Minister Carney commits to the North – by Shane Lasley (North of 60 Mining News – March 20, 2025)

https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/

Just four days after being sworn in as Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney flew to Nunavut to reaffirm Ottawa’s commitment to strengthening Arctic security and unlocking the economic potential across Canada’s mineral-rich North.

“Our government will strengthen Canada’s Arctic security, bolster partnerships with our closest Allies, unleash the North’s economic potential, and reaffirm reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples,” Prime Minister Carney said ahead of his trip North. “Canada will remain a strong, secure, and sovereign nation.”

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