Norway is one of the first countries to formally authorize seabed mining activities in its waters after its parliament backed plans in January to prospect for minerals across 280,000 square kilometers (108,000 square miles) of its Arctic continental shelf.

“We will be attentive to the developments of deep sea mining in Norway and also around the world,” Maros Sefcovic, the bloc’s green deal chief, said at a press briefing. “Norway is one of the countries which is very careful when it comes to the protection of the environment.”

The nation meanwhile signed a memorandum of understanding with the EU on Thursday to develop land-based raw materials and Sefcovic didn’t rule out potential further collaboration in the future.

Sefcovic added that in May the EU would open a call for proposals for prospective mining projects for key raw materials from friendly countries as part of its plans to protect its supply chains during the transition to net zero by the middle of the century.

In trying to shift away from Russia for fossil fuels and China for key raw materials, the EU has boosted its reliance on Norway, which has an abundance of both.

But scientists have condemned sea bed mining and caused for a moratorium, citing a lack of data on its environmental and climate impacts. Jan Christian Vestre, Norway’s trade minister, defended the move.

“We need to extract more minerals for the green and digital transition,” he said. “We’re also talking about our resilience and strategic autonomy. We don’t want to be so dependent on countries from other parts of the world.”

(By John Ainger)

The diversified miner had initially forecast a production of 3.4 million wet metric tons (amt) of manganese in fiscal 2024, slightly lower than 3.5 million amt produced in fiscal 2023.

South32 is the world’s largest producer of manganese, used as a steel additive, and owns 60% of GEMCO while the rest is owned by Anglo American.

Operations at GEMCO were halted due to the impacts of Tropical Cyclone Megan, with initial assessments indicating flooding in the mining pits, the miner said.

The company has also confirmed significant structural damage to the wharf and port infrastructure at the mine with alternative shipping arrangements being evaluated.

“Further assessment of the full impact of the damage is ongoing,” the company said, adding that it will release manganese production forecast along with March quarter production results.

(By Roushni Nair; Editing by Ravi Prakash Kumar)

“We are ready now for carmakers to begin to gear up,” Trade and Industry Minister Ebrahim Patel told reporters. “A carmaker can commence immediately to put in place the production capabilities and production systems,” he said Monday on the sidelines of a Black Industrialists and Exporters Conference in the capital, Pretoria.

South Africa, in an effort to preserve a key export industry, last month announced a 150% tax deduction on investments in the local production of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles from March 2026.

The country’s vehicle exports generated more than $21 billion in earnings last year. But car companies were worried about the lack of government support for EVs, amid shrinking demand for conventional petrol and diesel-powered engines in Europe, South Africa’s primary export market.

Patel said the long lead time was designed to give South African carmakers enough time to prepare production facilities and win support from their parent companies.

“As they incur that expense off the back of our incentive, they know they will be reimbursed,” he said.

The tax break is key for South Africa, which despite its natural advantages, has done little to develop an EV industry in the country.

South Africa has abundant supplies of raw materials vital for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, including increasing supplies of nickel and the world’s largest reserves of manganese. it also holds the world’s largest platinum reserves, a metal used in fuel-cell engines that run on hydrogen.

(By Mpho Hlakudi)

The category three cyclone in the southwestern Gulf of Carpentaria is forecast to cross the coast Monday, according to an update from the Bureau of Meteorology. After making landfall, it’s expected to weaken during Tuesday and move west across the Northern Territory as a tropical low, the bureau said.

The storm has already led to the closure of a manganese mine on Groote Eylandt island, the world’s largest producer of the metal, according to the Northern Territory government. The mine’s production value was A$1.53 billion ($1 billion) in 2022-23, it said. The storm may also impact Shell Plc’s Prelude liquefied natural gas plant off the coast of Western Australia.

The very destructive core of the storm is expected to impact the coast between the Northern Territory and Queensland border with winds of up to 200 kilometers (124 miles) an hour, according to the bureau. About 800 people are likely to be evacuated from the Indigenous community of Borroloola to Darwin on Monday, federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said in a radio interview.

Another tropical low storm northwest of the Pilbara coast is expected to remain weak until Tuesday, the bureau said. From Wednesday, it is forecast to move steadily westward across the Indian Ocean and have an increasing chance of developing into a tropical cyclone. At this stage, there is no threat of any direct impacts to the Pilbara coast, it said.

(By Keira Wright)

According to the study, confidence in the world’s ability to achieve net zero by 2050 seems to be eroding as it becomes more difficult to ensure adequate investment returns and progress diverges in a fragmenting world. This view is consistent across most regions and is most strongly held among people working in the oil and gas sector.

Bain & Company surveyed over 600 industry executives in mining, oil and gas, utilities, chemicals and agribusinesses across the globe to better understand their views on the energy transition, new technologies, and investment opportunities, and where they see the greatest challenges for decarbonization.

“This year’s survey found that energy and natural resource companies have not dampened ambitions for their transition-oriented growth businesses. However, customers’ willingness to pay is a growing issue, as is the ability to generate adequate return on investment (ROI) in energy transition-oriented projects. As a result, companies are focusing on projects with a viable ROI path,” said Joe Scalise, head of Bain & Company’s energy and natural resource practice. “The longer the executives are at the front lines of the energy transition, the more sober they are getting about the transition’s practical realities.”

The survey points out that executives in the Middle East (61%), Asia-Pacific (55%), and Latin America (51%) are feeling more optimistic about the prospects of their transition-oriented growth such as renewables, hydrogen, bio-based products, and lithium and other transition commodities that will contribute to their company’s valuation and profits by 2030. Hence, they are maintaining or increasing green investments. Only 4%, 12% and 10%, respectively, of executives from the three regions expressed less optimism, while the remainder showed no significant change.

The survey revealed a more balanced picture in Europe where 30% of executives revealed more optimism vs. 27% who were less optimistic about their new energy growth business areas contributing to the bottom line.

In North America, 29% of executives were more positive compared to 17% who were less positive on their transition-related growth areas.

Returns to scale-up

“Like last year, executives say the greatest obstacle to scaling up their transition-oriented businesses is finding enough customers willing to pay higher prices (or having equivalent policy support) to create sufficient return on investment,” the report states. “In fact, the share of executives identifying this as a very significant roadblock jumped 14 percentage points from 2023 to 2024, to 70% of executives.”

The experts behind the study note that the direct impact of higher interest rates on the cost of transition projects is likely shaping executives’ perspective on the challenges associated with customer willingness to pay. 

Bain has found that higher rates put upward pressure on the effective cost of low-carbon projects and a 500-basis-point increase in the cost of capital can increase the total annual revenue required to finance a project by as much as 50%.

Trendy North America

The survey presents North America as an emerging leader for green investments as 79% of all executives view it as an attractive region for energy transition investments. The next most attractive region is Europe at 65%. 

Australia and New Zealand come in as second runner-ups at 43%. 

Even as increasing government subsidies make some regions, such as North America, more attractive for investment, executives have growing concerns about policy stability.

The US Inflation Reduction Act is a major factor in North America’s investment attractiveness, but factors such as the availability of relatively low-cost natural gas feedstock also influenced the result. 

“However, while almost two-thirds of US executives surveyed agree that the IRA’s subsidies target the right areas, less than one-quarter believe that the policy regime will remain stable over the next five to 10 years,” the dossier states. “Furthermore, 42% of US executives think the IRA’s subsidies are unclear and that the rules are not easy to follow.”

About 70% of executives worldwide say that reducing policy uncertainty would very significantly improve their ability to scale up transition-oriented businesses.

Ambassador Cong Peiwu said the Canadian government is “wrong” to prevent Chinese investors from buying majority stakes in domestic mining companies, like it did in 2022 when it forced three Chinese state-owned firms to divest from a trio of lithium companies.

“Politicizing normal commercial cooperation and using national security as a pretext for political interference is wrong. China has expressed firm opposition to this,” said Cong in an interview with Bloomberg News on Wednesday.

“We’ll continue to do business on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit.”

The comments follow remarks by Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson last week warning miners that Chinese stakes will face strict national security reviews.

Chinese investment has continued to flow through Canada’s mining sector more than a year after Trudeau moved to tighten its foreign ownership rules.

This year alone, Zijin Mining Group Co. initiated plans to buy a 15% stake in Canadian copper company Solaris Resources Inc., Ganfeng Lithium Group Co Ltd. moved to take a 15% stake in Vancouver-based Lithium Americas Argentina Corp. and Yintai Gold agreed to buy gold explorer Osino Resources Corp. for C$368 million ($271 million).

Canadian government officials, speaking on condition they weren’t named, have told Bloomberg they are tracking the issue closely and are considering whether further measures are needed beyond the current national security review regime.

While Wilkinson warned that recent transactions will be subject to rigorous reviews, Cong urged Canada’s government to “respect market laws, rather than shouting slogans against China and waging these wrong-placed accusations against China by over-stretching the concept of national security.”

China has found an ally in Canada’s cash-strapped junior mining firms, some of which have called on Ottawa to relax tougher rules on Chinese investment while the sector struggles to raise capital while commodity prices are low.

China’s investments provide capital to those firms at a time when metals have become an essential ingredient to the global transition away from fossil fuels. Minerals including lithium, copper, nickel and cobalt are key components of electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines, though countries like Canada and the US have pushed to build a domestic supply chain to reduce China’s dominance in the global mining industry.

“Critical mining is about those materials to be used in sectors like new-energy vehicles,” said Cong. “That’s good for the whole world. We’re talking about coping with climate change.”

(By Jacob Lorinc and Brian Platt)

CHART: China’s Belt and Road mining investment hits record

Exxaro’s shares were up 5.19% at 0910 GMT after the miner declared a special dividend of 5.72 rand per share, in addition to a 10.10 rand per share payout.

It earlier reported that logistics constraints and softer coal prices contributed to a 22% dip in Exxaro’s headline earnings to 11.33 billion rand ($609.19 million) last year. Exxaro had about 14.8 billion rand in net cash at the end of last year.

The Johannesburg-based company, which also has interests in iron ore and renewable energy, wants to acquire assets in copper and manganese to take advantage of the global shift from fossil fuels toward cleaner energy.

“We are actively looking. We’re in the market, but we’re not desperate,” Tsengwa told Reuters.

She declined to say if the company had begun any negotiations.

Exxaro was among investors that wanted to buy Khoemacau copper mine in Botswana but were eventually outbid by China’s MMG, which paid about $1.9 billion for the assets.

“There’s nothing that passes us by, there’s nothing we do not know that is out there on the market,” Tsengwa said. “You know, people do talk to us because they know we’re interested.”

Exxaro is weighing a number of opportunities, chief growth officer Richard Lilleike said.

Along with rivals, such as Thungela Resources, Exxaro is battling a profit squeeze from challenges in the South African market, including lack of sufficient rail capacity to move coal to ports for export.

($1 = 18.5986 rand)

(By Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, David Goodman and Tomasz Janowski)

In a paper published in the journal Chemical Science, Johannes Fessler explains that each of these three chemical elements has the potential to replace several noble metals that are commonly employed in organic chemistry to catalyze fine chemicals.

As an example, Fessler describes a complex active ingredient candidate based on pyrrole, a common drug precursor, which can be created from “simple starting materials” with the help of an acid-tolerant homogeneous iron catalyst and at room temperature.

“Homogeneous” catalysis means that the starting materials – catalyst, solvent and ultimately the product and by-product – are dissolved in a single reaction vessel. They must therefore be separated after each reaction step, purified and prepared for the next step.

“If you manage to save one of these steps in the chemical process, you greatly reduce the amount of time and material required and minimize waste,” Fessler said in a media statement.

This is precisely what he achieved with the reaction to pyrrole, using a reaction cascade.

Climate-neutral chemical industry

Replacing noble metals as catalysts with iron and the like has become an attractive research topic.

“The task of climate-neutral, sustainable management is facing the chemical industry as well as all other sectors,” the researcher said.

Iron is abundant, making up 5% of the earth’s crust. And after iron and titanium, manganese is the most common transition metal on the planet.

On the other hand, there is a reason why base metals have so far only played a marginal role in organic chemistry.

“They are often less stable in catalytic processes than catalysts made of noble metals,” Fessler explained. “In addition, they usually work at high temperatures and pressures in the area I am researching.”

However, such harsh conditions would destroy the complex molecules in drug production. The chemical structures that ensure the specific effect of a drug, the so-called functional groups in the molecule, are particularly at risk.

In this respect, it is a success to show how catalysts made of iron, manganese and cobalt can sometimes manage with significantly milder reaction conditions compared to previous practice. In the case of pyrrole, these are temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius.

Johannes Fessler’s experiments revealed another advantage of his approach: His non-noble metal catalysts very precisely converted only those molecules that the chemists needed in the actual synthesis. “We call this approach highly selective. It produces hardly any by-products or waste,” he said.

The scientist tested the reliable functioning of his reaction on various active ingredients and drug precursors.

“We wanted to make sure that the iron catalyst also activates the right place in the molecule for these substances and spares the sensitive functional groups,” he noted.

In this way, the chemist tested his method on widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs and blood pressure medications, among others.

The quest for substitutes for fossil fuels has increased the need for metals used in the batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs) and in green-energy applications. Minerals and metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese can be found in potato-sized nodules on the ocean floor. Reserves are estimated to be worth anywhere from $8 trillion to more than $16 trillion and they are in areas where companies, including deep-sea mining pioneer The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC), plan to target. 

According to the report, entitled “How to lose half a trillion” by non-profit Planet Tracker, extracting metals from the seafloor could cost the mining industry $30 to $132 billion in value destruction.

François Mosnier, head of Oceans and report lead author at Planet Tracker, told MINING.COM this estimate is the result of adding the combined value loss the activity would cause for both ocean floor and terrestrial miners.

“For the deep sea mining sector, focusing only on polymetallic nodules in international waters, the cost would reach $35 billion-$49 billion of value destruction,” Mosnier said. 

“This amount was computed based on the estimated invested capital in the sector in 2043 ($115 billion), the industry’s estimated return on invested capital (-2%) and the industry’s weighted average cost of capital (WACC) and long-term growth (3%).”

Put simply, the deep-sea mining industry would not beat the cost of the capital it requires to exist, he said.

“Before factoring in any environmental impacts, the economics already appear uncompelling,” Mosnier said. “High operating expenditures mean that returns will be negative for investors in deep sea mining, which will also destroy value in other sectors, such as terrestrial mining and fishing.”

On top of that, major global banks such Credit Suisse, Lloyds, NatWest, and Standard Chartered, Dutch bank ABN Amro, and Spanish group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, have all introduced policies that rule out funding deep-sea exploration and extraction.

The report highlights the positive financial impact of respecting nature as sectors dependent on preserving intact ecosystems have outperformed those exploiting resources threefold over the last three decades.

It also urges investors to focus on nature preservation rather than resource extraction a repeats its call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining.

Ready to start

While the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has yet to set rules for the extraction of minerals and metals from the ocean floor, there already is a country that doesn’t need to wait: Norway.

The nation secured in December parliamentary majority to go ahead with plans to open the Arctic Ocean to seabed mineral exploration, despite environmental groups and the fishing industry’s warnings that the move would risk the biodiversity of vulnerable ecosystems.

The European country, where vast oil and gas reserves have made it one of the world’s wealthiest nations, plans to search for minerals on its extended continental shelf.

China is another nation investing heavily in deep-sea mining technology, including remotely operated vehicles, vessels, and sonar scanning systems.

Chinese companies, according to the Pentagon, hold more International Seabed Authority contracts (five out of 31 for exploration and development) than any other country.

Opponents to seafloor mining have long-warned that consequences of both exploration and extraction of minerals from the seabed are unknown and that more research should be conducted before going ahead.

Those that support the expansion of activity believe deep-sea mining is central to meeting the increasing demand of mineral growth. The demand for copper and rare earth metals is predicted to grow by 40%, according to the International Energy Agency. 

The agency also expects that the demand share for nickel, cobalt and lithium from clean energy technologies alone will grow by 60%, 70% and 90%, respectively. 

According to a study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, producing battery metals from nodules could reduce emissions of CO² by 70-75%,  cut land use by 94% and eliminate 100% of solid waste.

The authors point out that 2023 was the first time that more than 50% of BRI engagement was through investments where Chinese investors take equity stakes as opposed to construction contracts, which are typically financed through loans provided by Chinese financial institutions or contractors, often accompanied by guarantees from the host country.

Last year Africa overtook the Middle East as the no. 1 target of BRI projects after a 114% jump in investments and a 47% jump in construction projects on the continent. Investments in Latin America and the Caribbean also doubled last year.  

China’s BRI-related investment in metals and mining reached $19.4 billion in 2023 according to the study, a 158% jump compared to 2022 and the highest on record.  

Minerals and metals investment focused on the green energy transition with copper making up the lion’s share of new project announcements last year, followed by sizable lithium, nickel and uranium spending under the BRI. 

Apart from a giant new copper processing facility in Saudi Arabia, mining investments were focused in Indonesia and various countries in Africa and South America.  

Examples include vertical integration investments by the world’s largest battery manufacturer CATL, which bought shares for a nickel mining concession in Indonesia from PT Aneka Tambang (Antam).

Lithium projects in Mali attracted investment from Chinese firms Jiangxi, Ganfeng and Hainan Mining (through the acquisition of Kodal Minerals) while Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt commissioned a lithium processing plant in Zimbabwe.

Downstream investment in battery and electric vehicle manufacturing also soared, reaching nearly $10 billion, according to the report. The largest investors under the BRI last year were CATL, accounting for more than 15% of overall spending, followed by Zijin Mining at 11%.  

Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt contributed nearly 9% of the total while CMOC (formerly China Molybdenum) and Minmetals each had a 5%-plus share of the $92.4 billion total investments in 2023. 

For 2024, the Griffith Asia Institute sees further growth of Chinese BRI engagement with a strong focus on country partnerships in renewable energy, resource-backed mining and related technologies including EV batteries.  

“Clearly now, we are reaching a very high level of interest so I would say that yes it seems to be inevitable,” said Michael Lodge, the secretary-general of the ISA, in an interview with CNBC.

“One of the main drivers of industrial interest is the potential to produce larger quantities of minerals at equivalent or lower cost to what can be produced on land,” Lodge added.

His comments come as the ISA prepares to recommence talks on deep-sea mining in Kingston, Jamaica, next month.

Recently, Norway’s parliament greenlit seabed mining exploration in the country’s territorial waters. The determination on January 9 made Norway the first country to formally authorize seabed mining activities in its waters.

Minerals and metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese can be found in potato-sized nodules on the ocean floor. Reserves are estimated to be worth anywhere from $8 trillion to more than $16 trillion.

According to a study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, producing battery metals from nodules could reduce emissions of CO² by 70-75%,  cut land use by 94% and eliminate 100% of solid waste.

Meanwhile, scientists have warned that the full environmental impacts of deep-sea mining are hard to predict, and environmental campaign groups say the practice can lead to ecosystem destruction and species extinction.

“It hasn’t been done yet, so it is very hard to say conclusively that it would be as destructive as some people claim that it would be,” said Lodge.

If a screenwriter were writing a new film with an anti-environment villain, one of the easiest ways to establish the moral bankruptcy of the antagonist would be to make the character a corporate industrialist hell-bent on mining the deep ocean.

The average audience, after all, does not require even a single frame of film to imagine that deep sea mining might involve any number of ecological horrors. Most opponents of deep sea mining lean into such favorable preconceptions, vividly characterizing deep sea mining as a catastrophic act of ocean ecosystem vandalism, which any responsible citizen ought to categorically oppose with do-or-die fervor.

Thus it may come as a surprise that none other than James Cameron, passionate deep ocean explorer and director of the ocean-themed “Avatar: The Way of Water,” recently expressed feeling open-minded toward deep-sea mining as a “less wrong” alternative to conventional land-based mining.

A challenge is that seafloor mining immediately starts off at a reputational disadvantage, a product of what Cameron calls society’s “weird habit of blowing the wrong thing out of proportion.” This instinctive reaction leads many to overlook the potential for deep sea mining to offer a more just, lower-impact, and lower-carbon way to mine metals than conventional terrestrial mining – a proposition that evidence so far seems to suggest has real promise.

As an oceanographer by training, I endorse Cameron’s suggestion, as heretical as that may seem. Collecting metals from the seabed may well be a “more right” way for humanity to source some of its needs for new metals.

This opportunity to pioneer a new dramatically lower-impact form of mining highlights how important it is for environmentalists and ocean scientists to critically reexamine the automatic instinct to oppose any further alteration of our seas. In the face of forces like climate change and far more extensive human activities that have and will continue to keep changing the oceans, such aspirations are already futile.

Equally futile are superficial attempts to reject new mining both on land and at sea with impossible recycling math, thereby avoiding having to wrestle with the energy transition’s implacable trade-offs. With these factors in mind, it is well worth asking whether we ought to continue concentrating the impact of our metals production on land in service of a shining ideal of ocean conservation that is already unattainable.

What is deep sea mining, really?

While some have speculated about mining other potential ocean-based resources for many decades, collecting seafloor nodules is closest to commercial operations and at the focus of most of the ongoing debate. Other marine resources remain far more speculative, and would be subject to their own unique environmental assessments and regulatory restrictions. Indeed, no commercial-scale harvesting of seafloor metals has occurred yet, as governments and industry await the finalization of international regulations and environmental standards.

In certain regions of the abyssal seafloor between 3.5 and 6 kilometers in depth, natural chemical processes have formed vast fields of potato-sized concretions rich in manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt. As coincidence would have it, manganese, nickel, and cobalt are the exact metals used to manufacture the nickel-manganese-cobalt lithium-ion battery packs found in many electric vehicle batteries and other electronic devices.

Nickel and manganese are also used extensively in many standard steel and aluminum alloys as well as in other clean energy technologies like hydrogen electrolysis cells, while copper is a crucial component for countless power grid infrastructure elements. Finally, supply chains for these metals exhibit a concerning degree of overconcentration, with around 70% of cobalt and nickel processing and 44% of copper refining currently based in China. Consequently, deep-sea nodules pose implications for the metal requirements of not just electric car batteries, but for the clean energy transition as a whole.

Prospectors propose using remotely-operated robots to simply vacuum up these nodules and pump them to motherships at the ocean’s surface. In contrast, mining these same metals on land would typically require clear-cutting forest and vegetation, then blasting and digging surface excavations or deep mine shafts to extract buried ore, exhuming the soil layer and many layers of rock in the process.

No form of mining is without environmental impacts, and the same is certainly true for seafloor nodule collection. Most of the robotic collector vehicles currently in testing use hydraulic jets to dislodge the nodules, sucking up the metal-rich rocks along with the top 5-10 centimeters of sediment. This will likely kill the majority of bottom-dwelling organisms caught in the collector’s path. The sediment ingested by the collector vehicle is subsequently ejected, creating a plume near the seafloor in the vehicle’s wake that could harm or bury seafloor life.

While being transported to the mothership at the ocean’s surface via pipe, the nodules may rattle within the pipe, generating loud underwater noise. Finally, return water and sediment carried to the mothership through these pipes must be brought back to the ocean floor which may affect local carbon and nutrient cycling and generate a relatively dilute, light sediment plume.

Let there be no doubt that harvesting deep-sea nodules would deteriorate local seafloor ecosystems to some extent. But the direct and more long-lasting seabed disturbance is limited to the path of the collector vehicles. The effects of the sediment plume near the seafloor depend on how much the sediment cloud rises and travels horizontally, and how much plumes affect bottom-dwelling organisms. The impact of noise from piping nodules to the surface depends on the equipment used and the sensitivity of nearby animals to that noise. Furthermore, impacts like noise and ejected sediment could cease immediately should mining companies pause or end operations.

Meanwhile, the one-third of Earth’s surface covered by land contains all of our paved concrete cities, all of our land-based mines, and all of our vast expanses of cropland and livestock pasture. To date, the burden of nearly the entirety of society’s current and historic demand for metals has fallen upon this minority of the planet’s surface area that we happen to live in closest proximity to. Nor should we forget that society also already carries out numerous ocean-based economic activities—fishing and whaling, marine shipping, the dredging of shipping channels, sand harvesting, offshore oil and gas drilling, and the construction of offshore wind turbines, undersea pipelines, and cable networks. Many of these operations produce similar impacts in terms of noise and local seafloor disturbance.

Sourcing metals from nodules could be preferable to conventional mining on land from a human perspective as well. Extracting metals from remote locations at sea that are literally uninhabitable may avoid many of the risks to human communities and sociopolitical conflicts that terrestrial mining can pose. The production of metals from nodules would also rely primarily on skilled labor in sectors with traditionally strong union representation like shorefront workers and metalworkers, avoiding risks like mine worker exploitation and poor safety standards that confront many global mineral supply chains today.

Humanity may also share the benefits of deep sea metals more broadly than has historically been the case in mining. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) tasks the International Seabed Authority (ISA) with not only regulating seabed economic activities, but with collecting royalties on mining and redistributing them as benefits to countries globally, prioritizing developing countries in particular. The claims-based nature of seabed exploration under the ISA has also encouraged companies to partner with sponsor nations including small island developing states with few other economic opportunities that could themselves benefit from revenue and administrative fees associated with such agreements. As such, one wonders whether seafloor nodules might offer not just technical and environmental advantages relative to traditional mining, but also produce better social outcomes as well.

An incoherent debate

Ultimately, it is critical to distinguish between accurate claims about deep sea nodule collection and misleading assertions without basis.

Seafloor mining opponents claim nodule collection will pose an existential threat to marine life, driving rare seafloor species to extinction, or threatening fisheries at the scale of entire ocean basins. Activists have lobbied governments and potential industry customers like automakers to support moratoria on deep-sea mining, arguing that nodule collection is too dangerous to allow or consider—at least until scientists learn more about the risks.

But opponents of nodule collection are engaging in exaggeration, cherry-picking, and misleading messaging that clearly call into question their rhetorical commitments to let the science speak. Cases abound where activists have cited scientific research to claim catastrophic impacts of nodule harvesting that far exceed the actual findings in question.

For example, recent Greenpeace campaigns have widely smeared polymetallic nodules as “radioactive” and potentially harmful to workers, a claim that some reporting has uncritically repeated. Yet the actual scientific study that activists are citing concludes that nodules emit low amounts of relatively harmless alpha radiation, which cannot even penetrate human skin, and proposes that simply requiring workers to wear an N95 mask would provide effective protection.

Or there’s the case of exaggerated claims about the future of tuna. A recent study examining the overlap between Pacific tuna population patterns and the nodule-rich seafloor areas has motivated activists, journalists, and fishing industry representatives to label nodule collection as a threat to Pacific tuna on an ocean-wide scale. But it once again appears that nobody has read the underlying paper. The study only investigated the potential for tuna populations to migrate into one nodule-containing seafloor region in response to future climate change, and did not directly study the influence of nodule harvesting operations on tuna. This is a clear case of activists and reporters spawning scientific conclusions from their imagination to fit a desired narrative.

A broader look at activist campaigns against seafloor nodule collection suggests that opponents simply aren’t interested in scientific impact assessments to begin with. Anti-mining advocates represent environmental risks from nodule harvesting as though they are inherent and fundamental, ignoring the potential for regulations or technology to reduce impacts.

Scientific findings with any industry connection are dismissed on principle rather than refuted on their research methods or merits. Direct action activists call for decade-long bans on nodule exploration until scientific understanding improves, while obstructing small-scale expeditions intended to conduct some of that very science. And empty lip service in more formal proceedings notwithstanding, opponents’ public messaging remains noticeably disinterested in advancing any solutions to the risks they loudly emphasize.

On the other hand, it is true that deep sea nodules are not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary for the energy transition. The quantities of metals required to manufacture electric vehicles at global scale over the next few decades would not come close to exhausting either land-based or seafloor nodule deposits.

As Table 1 shows, humanity could—without so much as touching deep-sea metals—produce nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries for between 1.5 to 5 billion electric vehicles before encountering cobalt supply limitations. More importantly, with a rapidly-growing share of electric vehicles utilizing lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries that do not consume cobalt, nickel, or manganese, it appears increasingly likely that the future global electric vehicle fleet may not require as much of these three metals.

In pure quantitative resource terms, deep-sea metals are thus optional for net-zero pathways. But given how society is presently grappling with how to best expand and diversify battery metal production today, the insistence that ocean resources are off-limits risks ruling out a promising approach for accomplishing this more efficiently and sustainably.

In response, activists challenge the very idea that society requires any significant new mining at all, often by calling instead for improved recycling and a crusade against private automobile ownership. This car-hating recycling-based circular economy platform rather elegantly upholds traditional conservationist principles while dodging most acknowledgement that the global shift towards more sustainable societies might involve ecological tradeoffs. However, it is both incoherent and incorrect. Specific proposals for reducing car ownership are often unrealistically overoptimistic, while cold, hard math suggests that even a vastly smaller global car fleet would still require electric vehicle replacements on the order of at least several hundred million electric cars, relative to the 30 million or so that exist today. The quantitative case for new battery metal mining is unshakeable.

As such, climate hawks would do well to consider the environmental case for deep-sea metals. One particular advantage is adaptive management. Unlike a surface mine on land, where many significant ecological impacts occur all at once during the mine’s initial construction, the fingerprint of nodule collection on the seafloor is incremental with every unit of rocks collected.

If scientists conclude that it is important for collector vehicles to leave more nodules behind, operators can adjust accordingly even midway through harvesting an area. If regulators determine that underwater noise from nodule collection is more harmful than anticipated, they can require technology improvements that reduce impacts from that point forward. If collector vehicle technology improves in ways that further minimize environmental risks, regulators can compel all operators to adopt that technology.

At the most basic level, we can imagine forms of seafloor nodule collection that tread extremely lightly upon the seafloor. Regulators are working with scientists and aspiring operators to define initial precautionary thresholds for dissolved metals, noise, light, and turbidity that nodule collectors will in turn commit to meet. Across the conceivable spectrum of approaches one can envision robots that only disturb sediment to half the depth, that use dimmer onboard lights, or that eject sediment in a controlled manner to greatly reduce the size of the plume in their wake.

Advocacy by many opponents for seafloor mining bans that would foreclose any of these possibilities hints at a narrow-minded aversion that fixates more on the idea of collecting seabed metals than it does on the actual impacts.

Gatekeepers of the ocean

That ocean conservation activists and ocean researchers opposed to seafloor nodule collection should not be surprising. The average oceanographer chooses the field more out of a genuine love of the ocean and belief in the intrinsic value of oceanic knowledge, than out of any desire to invent world-changing technology or win a Nobel Prize. The same is true for many ocean advocates.

In such loving eyes, the ocean is at once pristine and untouchable, but also fragile and increasingly tainted. Yet such a worldview winds up paradoxically invoking humanity’s longstanding, deep interactions with the ocean to declare the oceans off-limits to new activities.

The idea that the ocean is better off the less humans interact with it too often neglects to consider how treating the seas as sacrosanct can itself come at societal and environmental costs. Fishing well in excess of fish population replenishment serves neither food security nor ocean life, but the seas can support even extensive fishing that spares large areas of land from farming.

Cargo ships and the concrete wharfs and dredged channels to support them impose harms on ecosystems, but enable global trade and link continents that would otherwise have to sustain themselves in isolation. Similarly, arguments opposing deep sea nodule harvesting cannot weigh only the costs or benefits to the ocean alone.

A common line of argument declares that humans clearly have not shown any ability to steward the environment on land, and therefore cannot by any means be trusted to extract resources from the ocean. But with nearly all human activities leaving some mark upon the land environment, would environmentalists ever really concede, at any point present or future, that humans have achieved sufficient redemption in their eyes to collect nodules at sea? Indeed environmentalists too often express similar fatalism towards seemingly any kind of human activity. Utopias do not exist, and demanding that humankind achieve utopia before attempting anything new is to effectively insist that society remain in an eternal purgatory of stasis.

The alternative, ecomodernist view is that sourcing metals from the ocean represents a part of the process itself of demonstrating better stewardship of our land ecosystems. The ocean certainly faces its share of problems, and turning to seabed nodules in order to reduce the known problem of mining impacts on land may create new problems—which humans can and will solve in turn. But humanity is already asking enough of the one-third of Earth’s land surface that it is well worth seeking an optimal balance by leveraging the watery two-thirds of the globe a little more. Arguments over the ecological diversity of seafloor nodule regions notwithstanding, it is patently obvious that the richness of biomass per unit area of land cleared for conventional mining is many orders of magnitude greater.

In the end, the better question to ask is not whether humanity should collect deep-sea metals, but rather how. Before claiming that the cost of collecting nodules from the ocean floor is too high, researchers, activists, regulators, and companies should explore the degree to which operators can reduce impacts and define what obligations to hold industry accountable to. As such, calling for immediate moratoriums on deep-sea mining is not only premature, but a circumvention of constructive dialogue and negotiation.

Much will depend on the final form of international seabed regulations, not to mention the formulation of promised mechanisms for collecting and distributing benefits globally from deep-sea activities in international territory. And given the precariousness of global supply chains for key metals, dragging such discussions out for many years would impose its own risks and costs.

But fundamentally, the debate over seabed mining would benefit from more open-minded curiosity and willingness to imagine the policy frameworks and technologies that could produce a new and better form of mining—one rooted from the very start in a more progressive vision of shared management of a global commons, for the collective benefit of all humanity.

(This article first appeared on the Breakthrough Institute)

This represents the largest private investment in southern Arizona’s history, and the largest investment in the local Santa Cruz county economy to date by nearly nine times, the Australian miner said.

Last year, the Hermosa project became the first to be added to the United States’ FAST-41 permitting process, and the company said it has the potential to become one of the world’s largest zinc producers.

“Today’s investment decision represents a major milestone for our business and aligns with our strategy to reshape our portfolio toward commodities critical to a low-carbon future,” South32 CEO Graham Kerr said in a news release.

“[The] project will strengthen the domestic supply of critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies and national defense, reducing America’s reliance on foreign countries and transforming the local economy,” Hermosa project president Pat Risner added.

With a surface footprint of just over 600 acres and projected to use approximately 75% less water than other mines in the region, the operation has been designed to minimize its environmental impact, the company said.

The new investment will fund construction of key infrastructure projects, including water management systems, power, site facilities, underground shaft sinking, initial underground development and other work required to begin operations, it added.

Once completed, this infrastructure would support future potential development of other deposits at the site, including the battery-grade manganese deposit, South32 said.

Construction and mine development at Hermosa, made up of the Taylor (zinc-lead-silver) and Clark (zinc-manganese-silver) deposits, started last year with approvals from the State of Arizona.

“Development of the zinc deposit is the first phase of a regional-scale opportunity at Hermosa, with ongoing activities to unlock additional value from the manganese deposit,” Kerr said.

In January, South32 released a mine plan of operations as a roadmap of operational activities at the Hermosa project from start to finish located on lands managed by the Coronado National Forest.

Fatih Birol said the production of electric cars, solar panels and other energy equipment requires a steady supply of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and copper.

The IEA continues to keep an eye on oil and gas markets, Birol said, but the supply chain of energy technologies is an important emerging security challenge.

“It is the reason we are embarking on a critical minerals security program,” he said in a speech.

“Currently, we are A, not able to keep up with the demand, and B, the ability of manufacturing these critical minerals is concentrated in one single country or two,” he said.

He did not give further details, but said the program was “inspired by our oil security mechanism”, which requires member countries to hold 90 days’ worth of oil stocks that can be released in the event of global supply disruptions.

China is the main producer for 30 out of 50 critical materials, according to a US Aerospace Industries Association paper last year, and is the world’s top miner and processor of rare earths.

The country last year imposed curbs on exports of gallium and germanium and types of graphite in an effort to protect its dominance in strategic metals.

The IEA’s move comes as countries escalate efforts to cut emissions, requiring ready supplies of critical minerals such as lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite used in batteries, and rare earth elements used in wind turbines and electric vehicles.

That new demand has stirred concerns about price volatility and security of supply, and the IEA has warned that even in an electrified, renewables-rich energy system, geopolitics remains a key consideration.

Last July, the agency published its inaugural Critical Minerals Market Review and hosted in September the first-ever international summit on critical minerals and their role in clean energy transitions.

(By America Hernandez and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Musk premiered the Cybertruck smashed-window and all in November 2019. The Cybertruck – only the sixth production vehicle in the Tesla stable – sports the company’s proprietary 4680 cells first revealed at its now infamous Battery Day event in 2020.  

The 4680 is a soda can sized cell with a nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) cathode and is already powering the 84.6 kWh performance version of its Model Y assembled in Texas. 

The Cybertruck AWD and top of the range Cyberbeast model up that capacity to 122.4 kWh, according to Tesla filings with the US EPA.

Buyers can add a separately installed range extender to get the truck close to the 800km (500mi) driving range initially promised and qualify it for Biden administration’s $7,500 subsidy scheme until the base model becomes available.

Pre-orderly conduct

There is no firm number on the pre-orders Tesla has received. A crowdsourced tally put it as high as two million – a figure that is now widely quoted in the press – while Musk confirmed it is over one million. 

Given the hype surrounding the Cybertruck, two million fans who only had to put down $100 (now $250) for the privilege does not sound outlandish. 

How many Cybertrucks Tesla can produce is also far from being bolted down. 

Tesla told investors last year the company can produce anywhere between 250,000 and 500,000 units per year, but installed capacity at Giga Texas for this year is reportedly only 125,000. 

Elon Musk did admit in December that the Texas plant was in “production hell” and Tesla has a well-earned reputation for overpromising and underdelivering, but in 2023, Tesla did manage to up production 35% to 1.85 million vehicles. 

Mutatis Mutandas

Irrespective of model-version, Tesla’s triangle truck is a battery metals beast. 

If Tesla produces 125,000 Cybertrucks this year, the company would have had to procure around 14,000 tonnes of graphite, 11,000 tonnes of nickel, 10,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, 1,400 tonnes of cobalt and 1,300 tonnes of manganese, according to data from Adamas Intelligence, Toronto-based EV supply chain research consultants.

Easily doable and at current prices for these battery metals a bargain, even if you take into account yields all the way up and down the supply chain. Cell manufacture is notoriously tricky and as much as 30% of the raw material entering through the factory ends up as black mass.

At the low end of Tesla’s Cybertruck production target – 250,000 – mining quickly becomes a weightier matter for the company now worth just $582 billion in New York after a horrendous start to 2024. 

Add in those Cybertruck owners who opt for an extra pack in the back and there are tonnes of reasons why Tesla could consider upping its mining investments. 

Under this scenario – still highly conservative given the immense interest in the Cybertruck – Tesla needs the entire nickel output of Glencore’s Murrin Murrin mine in Western Australia and over half its cobalt. 

Fulfill the million preorders and Tesla needs to offtake 100% of Glencore’s annual nickel production, which the Swiss miner said will be between 80,000 and 90,000 tonnes in 2024 and everything Mutanda produced last year. 

Two million? Hope that no-one orders the range extender and Cybertruck assembly lines would need to add half a Norilsk for the nickel (presuming it’s allowed into Texas then) and two-thirds of Glencore’s entire cobalt production. 

Finished stainless steel is about 8%-10% nickel – so there’s that too.

Battery day and night

Natural graphite has been on its own wild ride – down some $300 from this time last year to the early $500s a tonne now. 

To power 1 million Cybertrucks, Tesla needs the natural graphite of the world’s number two producing country, Madagascar, according to the USGS. 

If most drivers want to go the extra mile add half the output of world number three Mozambique or most of fourth-ranked Brazil.    

Much like those that mine the devil’s copper and the goblin’s ore, lithium mining companies – and their investors  – have gone through seven heavens and nine circles of hell since the Cybertruck’s 2019 debut. 

Lithium carbonate equivalent was exchanging hands for $8,500 a tonne at the time on a global weighted average basis, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a London-based price reporting agency and satellite battery factory tracker. 

November 2022 LCE topped $80,000 a tonne. Today it is around $14,400 a tonne. 

When it comes to LCE, one million Cybertrucks with no big black box in the back, need one Greenbushes, the world’s largest hard rock lithium mine. 

That is, provided the Sino-Australian venture does not cut back further on production to ride out the downturn.

At the end of 2023, the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners reached a combined $1.42 trillion, up a healthy, if far from spectacular $48.7 billion over the course of 2023. Mining’s top tier is also worth $330 billion less than in March 2022.

Metal and mineral markets are volatile at the best of times – the nickel, cobalt and lithium price collapse in 2023 was extreme but not entirely unprecedented. Rare earth producers, platinum group metal watchers, iron ore followers, and gold and silver bugs for that matter, have been through worse.

Mining companies have become better at navigating choppy waters and as a whole the majors performed fairly consistently last year despite geopolitical and market turmoil, but within the ranking, 2023 fortunes were made and lost over what seemed like days.

The forced closure of one of the world’s biggest copper mines – and the subsequent collapse of owner First Quantum Minerals stock – served as a stark reminder of the outsized risks miners face over and above market swings.

Panama root canal

After months of protests and political pressure, at the end of November the Panama government ordered the closure of First Quantum Minerals’ Cobre Panama mine following a ruling by the Supreme Court that declared the mining contract for the operation unconstitutional.

Public figures, including climate activist Greta Thunberg and Hollywood actor Leonardo Di Caprio backed the protests and shared a video calling for the “mega mine” to cease operations, which quickly went viral. 

That mining cobre is at the nexus of the green energy transition is clearly an irony lost on those trying to save the world.  FQM is seeking arbitration and completely winding down operations will take time, but a reopening of Cobre Panama is not on the cards. 

From 25th position in the ranking at the end of March 2022 and a valuation well above $20 billion, the November-December sell off saw FQM drop out of the top tier altogether, ending 2023 at number 58 with a market cap below $6 billion. 

Cobre Panama supplied more than 40% of the company’s revenue, and with nickel prices plummeting FQM has also been forced to suspend operations at its Raventhorpe mine in Australia. 

Amid the inevitable takeover rumours now in circulation, shares in the Vancouver-based company have rallied in 2024, but still not enough to reenter the top 50.

No. 12 with a bullet 

If 2023 was an annus horribilis for FQM it was mirabilis for Amman Mineral Internasional. Stock in the Indonesian firm surged by 269% from its July debut in Jakarta to reach a market capitalisation of more than $30 billion at the end of last year – and number 12 in the ranking. 

That valuation is quite an achievement on annual revenue of $2 billion no matter how fat margins are at the company’s Batu Hijau copper and gold mine.  Batu Hijau is the third largest mine worldwide in terms of copper equivalent output (but no match for Cobre Panama when it comes to the orange metal alone)  and has been in production since the turn of the millennium. Amman is also developing the adjacent Elang project on the island of Sumbawa. 

Amman Minerals’ ascent has minted at least six new billionaires and the stock appears to be building on its success in 2024, rising by double digits in January already.

Indonesia’s other major mining IPO, Harita Nickel, was on a different trajectory altogether. After listing in April and raising $672m, the company has had a tough go of it and the stock has shed more than 38% since then as nickel prices continue to decline.

Shiny gold, dull silver, tarnished PGMs

The price of gold hit an all-time record on December 1, 2023.  But bullion’s best ever level passed without the usual fanfare and despite bullish indications for 2024, gold mining stocks did not exactly storm the rankings of the most valuable miners.

Over the course of 2023 gold and royalty companies on the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners added a collective $20.8 billion in market cap. 

And judging by gold miners’ performance so far this year, gold above $2,000 is not providing enough support. Newmont is already down 17%, Barrick has shed 13% and Agnico Eagle shareholders are 9% poorer. 

The number of precious metals companies in the top 50 has also been relatively stable over the years. With Newmont’s absorption of Newcrest now complete, the open slot was taken up by Kinross, which spent a few years in the wilderness. 

Anglogold Ashanti was just edged out by Jiangxi Copper for position number 50 on the last trading days of 2023, but based on its performance so far in 2024 the London-listed company is already back among the top tier. Indeed Anglogold is the only major gold player in the black year to date.

Silver has not been able to ride gold’s coattails and the top 50 has not had a silver specialist for a few years after Fresnillo dropped out (now at #61) and while Pan American Silver has come close in recent years at the end of last year it made it to #58 only. 

The exit of platinum and palladium majors like Sibanye Stillwater and Impala Platinum, now both valued at less than $4 billion, made space for Royal Gold to reenter at 47 at the end of last year, up from 57th in 2022. 

After a dismal 2023, the sole remaining PGM specialist Anglo American Platinum looks likely to lose more ground this quarter as palladium and platinum prices continue to slide into the new year.

Not too tough at the top 

London-listed Anglo American has had a rough year in part due to its exposure to platinum group metals and control of AngloPlat, and is now valued at $30 billion after peaking at $70 billion in March 2021.  

Were it not for the London-listed company’s iron ore operations, the 40%-plus slump in share value may have been deeper. Rumours that Glencore may be sniffing around now that the Swiss behemoth’s bid for all of Teck Resources has soured is also keeping Anglo from falling further down the rankings .  

Investors in Anglo, with a history going back more than a hundred years on the South African gold and diamond fields, have had a particularly wild ride over the last few years. In January 2016, Anglo’s market cap fell below $5 billion after it came close to suffocating under a pile of debt.  

Against expectations, iron ore seems to be holding above $120 a tonne, Chinese property bankruptcies and Beijing’s tepid stimulus response notwithstanding. 

Iron ore’s resilience despite Chinese troubles has also kept the share prices of the other diversified majors, which make their fattest profits from the steelmaking ingredient, from skidding. 

The top 10 mining companies have been able to keep their share of the total above 50% for a few years now. Not quite the magnificent seven, but size does matter in mining, particularly when access to capital is no longer a headache but a migraine. 

Expectations of another active year of M&A in the sector is likely to make the Top 50 top-heavier, especially now that it’s painfully obvious just how one-commodity companies like the lithium stocks can so easily be derailed. Coal miners’ strong 2023 suggests there are still exceptional minerals that prove the rule.   

Lithium losers 

After defying gravity early on, the combined losses for lithium miners in the top 50 climbed to nearly $30 billion in market cap over the 12 month period. Four counters occupy the worst performance table for 2023. 

The M&A drama surrounding Liontown, Albermarle and Hancock Prospecting turned out to be a soap opera and Chile’s move to take control of its lithium industry now appears far less consequential than feared.

Despite the precipitous decline in lithium prices in 2023, after hitting all time highs above $80,000 a tonne in November 2022, none of the battery metal miners’ stock performance was dire enough to drop out of the Top 50.

The merger of Livent and Allkem to form Arcadium Lithium could in fact up lithium mining’s representation in the ranking to seven should Pilbara Minerals’ January bleeding be stanched. But with lithium prices far from stabilizing, the battery metal’s presence in the top 50 may fade further. 

Pilbara Minerals, which unlike its peers was still able to show share price gains last year,  joined the Top 50 last year, bringing the number of companies based in the Western Australia capital to five, surpassing the tally of Vancouver, BC as the top home base in the ranking. 

With the exit of First Quantum, three mining companies in the top 50 call Vancouver home while the return of Kinross saw the ranks of Toronto-headquartered miners move back up to four.  

Nuclear options

Uranium prices more than doubled during 2023 and recently hit triple digits for the first time in 16 years. The breakthrough for the nuclear fuel comes after a decade in the doldrums following the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Canada’s Cameco made the best quarterly performer list once again in Q4 and after doubling in market worth in 2023.  The Saskatoon-based company now sits at no 23 in the ranking after jumping 22 places since end-2022.    

The value of shares in Kazatomprom, the world number one uranium producer, topped $10 billion at the end of 2023, placing it at position 38.  Until last year the state-owned Kazakh company was outside earshot of the Top 50 since its dual-listing in London and Astana in 2018.  

None of the smaller uranium companies are likely to pierce the top 50 by themselves, but combinations among the rank and file may edge in when countries aiming to ditch fossil fuels stop thinking they can have their yellowcake and eat it too.

*NOTES:

Source: MINING.COM, Morningstar, GoogleFinance, company reports. Trading data from primary-listed exchange at December 28 2023 to January 2, 2024 where applicable, currency cross-rates January 2, 2024. 

Percentage change based on US$ market cap difference, not share price change in local currency.

As with any ranking, criteria for inclusion are contentious. We decided to exclude unlisted and state-owned enterprises at the outset due to a lack of information. That, of course, excludes giants like Chile’s Codelco, Uzbekistan’s Navoi Mining, which owns the world’s largest gold mine, Eurochem, a major potash firm, and a number of entities in China and developing countries around the world.

Another central criterion was the depth of involvement in the industry before an enterprise can rightfully be called a mining company.

For instance, should smelter companies or commodity traders that own minority stakes in mining assets be included, especially if these investments have no operational component or warrant a seat on the board?

This is a common structure in Asia and excluding these types of companies removed well-known names like Japan’s Marubeni and Mitsui, Korea Zinc and Chile’s Copec. 

Levels of operational or strategic involvement and size of shareholding were other central considerations. Do streaming and royalty companies that receive metals from mining operations without shareholding qualify or are they just specialised financing vehicles? We included Franco Nevada, Royal Gold and Wheaton Precious Metals on the basis of their deep involvement in the industry.

Vertically integrated concerns like Alcoa and energy companies such as Shenhua Energy or Bayan Resources where power, ports and railways make up a large portion of revenues pose a problem. The revenue mix also tends to change alongside volatile coal prices. Same goes for battery makers like CATL which is increasingly moving upstream, but where mining still makes up a small portion of its valuation.  

Another consideration is diversified companies such as Anglo American with separately listed majority-owned subsidiaries. We’ve included Angloplat in the ranking but excluded Kumba Iron Ore in which Anglo has a 70% stake to avoid double counting. Similarly we excluded Hindustan Zinc which is listed separately but majority owned by Vedanta.

Many steelmakers own and often operate iron ore and other metal mines, but in the interest of balance and diversity we excluded the steel industry, and with that many companies that have substantial mining assets including giants like ArcelorMittal, Magnitogorsk, Ternium, Baosteel and many others.

Head office refers to operational headquarters wherever applicable, for example BHP and Rio Tinto are shown as Melbourne, Australia, but Antofagasta is the exception that proves the rule. We consider the company’s HQ to be in London, where it has been listed since the late 1800s.

Please let us know of any errors, omissions, deletions or additions to the ranking or suggest a different methodology.

Manganese X says the MOU, which is non-binding, is based on the potential supply of high-purity manganese sulfate monohydrate (HPMSM) for making electric vehicle (EV) batteries. A sample of the product is currently being pre-qualified by C4V for its gigafactory joint ventures.

The sample was produced as part of Manganese X’s pilot plant project using its patent-pending manganese purification technology to process Battery Hill manganese carbonate into EV-compliant (HPMSM) as a pre-curser to the cathode. The pilot is led by metallurgical research authority Kemetco, in Richmond, British Columbia.

C4V is currently involved in some of the world’s largest gigafactory developments, including Recharge Industries’ gigafactory in Geelong, Australia, and iM3NY’s gigafactory in the US.

Chief executive Martin Kepman said the MOU represents “a significant step” in Manganese X’s mission to become a sustainable and reliable North American supplier of HPMSM, and could even potentially lead to being a worldwide supplier.

“Through this MOU, we can ensure our HPMSM meets C4V specifications with the goal of progressing towards a binding offtake deal for our Battery Hill manganese,” Kepman said.

The 12.3-sq.km Battery Hill property consists of five manganese-iron zones that constitute one of the largest manganese resources in North America. A preliminary economic assessment in May 2022 outlined a low-capital manganese mine operation capable of producing 68,000 tonnes of high-purity material over a 47-year life.

At a 10% discount rate, the project would generate a post-tax net present value of $486 million and a post-tax internal rate of return of 25%, using a base case market price of $2,900 per tonne for battery-grade high-purity manganese sulphate. Capital costs are estimated at $350 million, with a payback of 2.8 years.

“Our timing is excellent as EV car manufacturers ramp up their efforts to secure long-term supplies of high-purity manganese. Manganese is consistently in the news as a battery chemistry of choice. Not only is it less expensive to process, manganese provides the EV battery with greater energy density and rechargeability, as well as a longer life cycle,” Kepman noted.

In September 2023, the company revealed that its first high-purity HPMSM samples were being readied for distribution to various EV original equipment manufacturers and EV cell manufacturers. These samples were earmarked for comprehensive testing to ensure compliance with EV battery standards.

Shares of Manganese X Energy were up by 10.5% by midday Wednesday on the MOU announcement. The company’s market capitalization was C$14.4 million ($10.8m).

In a surprise move, China’s top battery manufacturer CATL will supply Tesla with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries for Model 3 production at its newly built $2 billion factory outside Shanghai.

A follow up a year later confirmed the blow was bigly:

Cobalt, nickel free electric car batteries are a runaway success

Few months in, LFP Model 3 already commands 5% of global EV market, counts for 21% of Tesla battery capacity hitting roads–even before key patent expiry next year. 

The iron fist    

It’s January 2024, and unfortunately for said cobalt and nickel bulls the blow from the iron fist is even more severe than feared. And the runaway success has become a battery-powered juggernaut.  

During that month nearly four years ago when Elon Musk first announced the move to LFP batteries, the cathode chemistry contributed less than 50 tonnes to overall battery metal demand, according to Adamas Intelligence, Toronto-based research consultants tracking demand for EV batteries by chemistry, cell supplier and capacity in over 110 countries.

The 50 tonnes LFP batteries used were a fraction of the nearly 13,000 tonnes of lithium, graphite, nickel, manganese and cobalt that found their way into the batteries of electric passenger cars sold during February 2020.

NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) and Tesla-Panasonic’s NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum) dominated the market for electric cars at the time. LFP fares badly against ternary cathode batteries in terms of energy and power density and therefore charging time and range. LFP’s cold weather performance is also significantly worse, but is hard to beat when it comes to cost, is better at thermal stability not catching fire and lifespan. 

Musk had long voiced concerns about nickel supply – once saying that he called up all the big mining CEOs to ask them to please make (sic) more nickel. Thrifting out cobalt was also a priority at the Texas-based electric car pioneer with Musk saying publicly that Teslas were virtually cobalt-free while simultaneously inking offtakes with Glencore. 

At the time, LFP was associated with tiny and tinny city runabouts like the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV Macaron (not making that up and yes, there is a cabrio version and it’s called the FreZe Froggy in Europe), end-mile delivery vans, buses and other special purpose vehicles. 

Range then as now was a top concern for those looking to electrify and the Wuling Mini EV (a GM joint venture creation now available in the top-of-the-range Gameboy Edition; look it up) only managed around 100 miles in lab conditions. 

The Mini EV surpassed the Tesla Model 3 as China’s bestselling EV in 2020. A sticker price of less than $6,000 clinched it.

Like other outlets, this one was skeptical of the idea that LFP fitted well with Tesla’s luxury and sporty carmaker image.

We were wrong. Sorry again Mr Musk.

Build your nickel, cobalt free dreams

Weeks after Tesla’s Shanghai surprise, LFP received what turned out to be an even bigger boost to its build out.  

In March 2020, BYD “unsheathed to safeguard the world” its Blade batteries. The Shenzhen-based auto and battery manufacturer’s breakthrough technology compensated for the inherent energy density limitations of LFP by cramming more cells into battery packs. 

BYD even said at the event (online only – this was March 2020 after all) it was happy to share the technology with all interested parties. Much was made of the safety of LFP over NCM. BYD shifted its entire range to LFP.

The month of the unsheathing Tesla supplied new owners of its S,3,X models and just launched Y, nine power hours for every one BYD did.  

Today BYD’s full electric range outsells Tesla in good months. Factor in its popular plug-ins – also LFP only – and BYD is nearly 600,000 car lengths ahead of Tesla.  Tellingly, BYD started out as a battery company in the 1990s.

BYD, in which Warren Buffet famously bought a stake in 2008 for $232 million that is still worth some $6 billion after years of steady divestment, sells one out of every five EVs around the world. That’s despite being largely absent from markets outside China (BYD supplies Tesla’s Berlin factory with LFP batteries). 

LFP now also runs the gamut of vehicle segments.  All the way from the Wuling Hongguang Nano EV (for those who found the Mini a bit too bulky) to BYD’s gigantic YangWang U8. The YangWang wagon can do a 360 degree tank turn, float on water and sail at 1.62 knots and retails for $150,000, making it China’s most expensive EV. It also weighs 3-and-half tonnes (another comparative downside of LFP). 

The cheaper of the pack 

During the first ten months of 2023 LFP cornered 31% of the global EV battery market in GWh terms despite virtually zero LFP manufacturing capacity outside China. By the time final registrations for the calendar year are tallied, it may well be a third.

Nickel and cobalt containing batteries are now cut out of over half the Chinese market in GWh terms. With China leading the pack, on a cumulative basis LFP recently overtook NCM 523 (roughly 50% Ni, 20% Co, 30% Mn) as the top cathode technology in the global EV parc. Adamas battery capacity data is based on vehicles delivered to end-customers, not wholesale markets or sales to dealerships.

LFP is now also firmly in the driver seat at Tesla. The vast majority of newly sold Model 3s around the world this year have been LFP powered.  And the LFP-version of the Model Y occupies the top spot in China in terms of battery capacity deployed.  

The cost advantage of LFP shrank considerably as lithium flirted with $80,000 a tonne in 2022, but the decline has been swift since then. In China, spot prices for lithium carbonate are below $16,000 a tonne, hydroxide used in hi-nickel batteries dipped below $15,000 last week and spodumene averaged $1,300 a tonne – all down by 80% in 2023 with losses accelerating into the new year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

The bounce caused by the trucker strike in central Africa and worries about DRC elections have turned into a dead cat and cobalt enters 2024 below $30,000 a tonne.

Coupled with the chaotic highs on London nickel markets giving way to a steady decline to the mid $16,000s a tonne on the LME, lithium’s losses have turned LFP cheap and cheerful again. 

Thanks a tonne 

The 50 tonnes of LFP induced demand of February 2020 is now 27,000 tonnes per month, to which you can add another few 100 tonnes from best of both worlds LFP-NCM combo batteries finding their way into more and more EVs.  

From just over 33% in 2019 before LFP’s coming out year, nickel’s share of global active battery material demand has now fallen below 25%.  From a nicely carved niche of 8% in 2019, cobalt clings on at less than 5% now.  Manganese is down from close to 9% to 6%. 

Nickel’s waning battery metal share comes despite the rapid adoption of nickel rich chemistries for NCM batteries. In early versions of NCM the metals were applied in a roughly 1:1:1 ratio. In 2023 this mix makes up 1% and that’s probably dealerships moving stock forgotten on a lot somewhere.  

So far this year NCM 811 with nickel in excess of 80% has cornered more than a fifth of the market in GWh terms, surpassing NCM 523 (roughly 50%+ nickel), according to Adamas. Tesla-Panasonic’s third generation NCA also contains over 80% nickel while NCM cathode chemistries with 90% nickel have been available for a while. 

Since lithium carbonate equivalent tonnages and LCE prices are almost always quoted in industry literature it’s easy to forget that tonne for tonne nickel is in fact THE battery metal and on a 100% metal content basis total demand for cobalt and manganese is not that far behind lithium. (New Year’s resolution: Always divide by 5.323.)  

Or in the words of Musk in 2016 well before LFP: “Technically, our cells should be called nickel-graphite, because the primary constituent in the cell as a whole is nickel. There’s a little bit of lithium in there, but it’s like the salt on the salad.”

Blade runners

So what would a world look like without blade runners like BYD’s Dolphin, Seal, Han, Song and YangWang and Fangchengbao luxury and off-road brands? What if Tesla opted to employ NCM and NCA for all their vehicles?  Or if the LFP cells supplied by CATL – the world’s biggest EV battery maker by a country mile – did not displace a third of its NCM output?

Hold onto your hard hats. It’s not pretty. 

The combined battery capacity of EVs (including conventional and mild hybrids) is likely to surpass 700 GWh in 2023, a 45% gain over 2022 and is more than five times the size it was in 2020 and the basket of battery metals in newly sold EVs should easily surpass one million tonnes, Adamas predicts.

On an annual basis potential nickel tonnes lost this year is likely to top 107,000 tonnes. For cobalt, the metal that went unwanted because of LFP would be more than 38,000  tonnes or roughly 20% of global production last year.  Producers of manganese for the battery supply chain would have enjoyed 58,000 tonnes greater annual demand.

Add tonnes lost to LFP to actual use for the year, and you get to 94,000 tonnes of cobalt demand from the EV sector. That’s more than half of cobalt mined each year ending up in the EV industry. For nickel that number is 375,000 tonnes and manganese 127,000 tonnes. 

Adamas crunched the numbers on the basis of mid-market NCM 5-Series being the battery doing the work of LFP, not NCM 811. Under the latter scenario the what-could’ve-been for nickel miners would naturally be even more eye-watering.       

Also keep in mind the kilograms that end up in every EV are fractions of what would have been procured upstream. 

A factor that is sometimes omitted from estimates of metal requirements is low yields in the conversion and manufacturing process.

CATL disclosed 50% yield in its factories early on, exacerbated by ramp up challenges, but even at a steady state your average cell producer turns as much as 30% of the metals entering factory gates into black mass. Between the mine mouth and the gigafactory many more tonnes are never recovered. 

Battery bulge 

Despite the havoc wreaked by LFP, other trends are nickel and cobalt’s friends. The combined battery capacity of EVs sold last year surged by 45% year on year and is running well ahead of new registrations which are up 33% globally, according to Adamas data.  

Battery capacity is a better gauge of metal demand than unit sales alone and not only are packs bulking up, the shift to high-nickel batteries has some way to go. 

Last year, the sales weighted average full electric vehicle – including LFP-powered units – sold globally contained just under 25 kilograms of nickel in its battery, 7% more than in 2022. The average battery in plug-in hybrids, which are soaring in popularity, particularly in China, had 6.4kg of the devil’s copper, a 12% year on year jump.  

The big battery bulge is also keeping cobalt weightings from falling more quickly amid ongoing thrifting. On average full electric cars sold globally in 2023 contained 4.8 kilograms and plug-in hybrids 2.2 kg up 5% and 2%.

Nickel’s not classy 

It’s perhaps too easy to blame LFP for today’s Ni-Co situation although it was earlier predictions for spectacular demand growth from electric cars that spurred much of the investment in new supply and in the case of nickel, new industrial processes, in the first place.

Global nickel exploration (and by extension cobalt) budgets, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence are up 19% last year to a remarkable $732 million, nearly a quarter of what is being spent expanding or finding new copper resources.  Nickel only reached annual output of 3 million tonnes last year and that’s after years of robust growth – the copper industry is nearly eight times the size. 

Most of the nickel mined around the world still ends up as stainless steel and soft demand from the construction and manufacturing sector on the all-important Chinese market has seen vast surpluses in non-class 1 nickel – not suitable for the battery supply chain – build up.

However, when it comes to demand from the EV sector, nickel class matters less today. Large chunks of the China-Indonesia nickel-pig-iron industry are pivoting towards LME and battery -friendly products (not so environmentally friendly though).

A rapid ramp up in Indonesia nickel mining, thanks to a slew of new high-pressure-acid-leach (HPAL) projects (even attracting investment from as far afield as Dearborn) which are about as environmentally conscious as they sound, only adds to the weak fundamentals. Indonesia is already responsible for half of global nickel output and Chinese investment in the archipelago is not slowing. 

Cobalt blues

Cobalt probably had most to gain from the EV revolution. It’s a small highly concentrated market, with few big players and sparkling per tonne prices.  

Indeed, Glencore was the first major to herald a new dawn for mining thanks to electric cars, telling investors in 2017 that “as early as 2020, when electric vehicles would still make up only 2% of new vehicle sales, related metal demand already becomes significant.”

That prediction proved conservative – global penetration reached over 5% in 2020.

But cobalt thrifting had become more of a priority after the 2018 spike to above $100,000 tonne scared automakers and ESG-transgression hunters went looking for breaches in the Congo.

Nearly all cobalt supply is a byproduct of nickel and copper mining. As far back as 2019, BMW’s offtakers pounced on what is the only primary cobalt mine in the world. Jervois halted construction on its Idaho project March last year, but Canada’s Fortune Minerals may provide an opportunity for enterprising automakers.

In an irony that would not be lost on cobalt promotors, rumours are swirling that Glencore is considering suspending production at Mutanda again to shore up cobalt prices (as it is, Mutanda’s output is down 15% due to lower grades). 

It worked in 2019 when Mutanda still had 20% of the market, but new supply not just from the Congo but also Indonesia where laterites come with a thick layer of cobalt would mute the impact this time around.

Cobalt just does not have much going for it at the moment. Vast cobalt stockpiles from Tenke Fungurume in the DRC are still being sold downstream and the copper-cobalt mine’s Chinese owner’s expansion plans are well under way. Tenke could soon rival Mutanda as the world’s largest cobalt mine and CMOC overtook Glencore as the world’s number one cobalt producer in 2023. 

A new railway through Zambia to Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam port will also alleviate cobalt’s lasting logistics problems, which have underpinned prices in the past. 

EVs overtook all else when it comes to cobalt demand a few years ago now, so a fall-off at the margins coupled with the small size of the market can quickly and thoroughly depress prices.  

Manganese meh

Manganese is often overlooked in the battery metals space and the excitement stirred by Volkswagen’s newly-formed PowerCo battery subsidiary back in March 2021 has long dissipated.  At the time, the world’s no 2 carmaker said it’s building six new plants and is looking at high-manganese batteries for its mid-range vehicles. 

But last month Volkswagen said a fourth European battery factory is postponed indefinitely, much to the relief of Czech taxpayers who unlike their Canadian counterparts now won’t have to shoulder billions in subsidies and tax breaks for the honour of having a large battery factory.  

Tesla has also expressed interest in manganese, with Musk saying last year high-manganese batteries could be an alternative to LFP, but there’s been little news since then. 

Besides, with ore production of 20 million tonnes per year, LMFP and other high-manganese chemistries were never going to light a fire under manganese at the mining level. 

That said, downstream battery ready compounds do become scarce from time to time and manganese sulfate in China has not succumbed the way lithium, cobalt and nickel have. Manganese sulphate is down 29% over the last year, changing hands for less than $700 a tonne in China.  

US, EU 2. Affordable Chinese EVs 0

Other development that could keep the LFP wolf from the door on markets outside China a bit longer are geopolitics and a growing mercantilist approach to trade in the world’s largest economies. 

While Chinese-made EVs have close to zero presence in the US, Europeans can and often do choose Geometry, HiPhi, Lynk & Co, Ruixing, Seres, Aeolus, Zeekr,  XPeng, Weltmeister (one of China’s earliest EV startups ribbing Wolfsburg and co), and others over homegrown automakers like Volkswagen, Peugeot and Fiat. 

Get behind the wheel of a Tesla, Citroen, BMW, Dacia, Honda, Renault or Smart and there’s also a good chance you’re driving a made-in-China vehicle.  Last year in terms of battery capacity rolled onto roads, nearly a fifth of the EVs bought by Europeans were made in China.  

The EU’s probe of Beijing’s subsidies to its EV industry is all but inevitable to result in tariffs and other measure to limit access to EU car markets while in the US, long-awaited new rules on so-called foreign entities of concern (FEOC) all but eliminates direct Chinese involvement. 

In 2024 EVs that contain any battery components manufactured or assembled by China will not be eligible for the US federal tax credit, currently a maximum of $7,500 per vehicle. The incentive cut-off date for any lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite or other battery metals produced by, or which make their way through China, is 2025. Rare earths used in nearly 90% of all EV motors are already subject to IRA rules.  

Not much more than a handful of electric cars sold in the US would qualify. On top of that a bipartisan group of lawmakers also recently asked for Trump era duties of 25% on Chinese automobiles to be doubled and to close any loopholes should China locate factories in Mexico, for instance. 

The new guidelines may allow US automakers to cut licensing and technology deals with Chinese companies. This should give a green light (although that’s far from clear) to ventures like Ford’s partnership with CATL for its LFP plant in Michigan, and Tesla’s venture in Texas with the Chinese behemoth.  

Ford made much of the fact that BlueOval – which is now going to be 40% smaller than originally envisaged – would produce LFP batteries, calling it a “key part” of its US EV plans allowing it to “scale more quickly, making EVs more accessible and affordable for customers.” Given the success of Tesla and BYD with LFP, US automakers are bound to follow in their tracks. 

Benchmark Mineral Intelligence sees LFP factory growth outside China at factors more than NCM build-out. But that would not nearly be enough for the rest of the world to embrace the technology at the same speed and scale as China, which itself is expected to grow LFP cathode capacity by more than three times by the end of the decade, according to the London-headquartered research firm and pricing agency. 

FEOC FOMO

The new EV provisions pitted automakers against mining firms with the former arguing that barring China from directly participating in the US mine-to-megawatt supply chain would be close to impossible given the short timelines and would delay EV adoption by Americans by pushing up costs. 

The FEOC rules are intended to complement the Inflation Reduction Act’s requirement that any EV subsidy is conditional on a percentage of all material inputs being sourced either domestically or from a US free trade partner. Currently the threshold is 30% and will rise to 80% in 2027.

An exception was made for foreign subsidiaries of privately-owned Chinese companies in friendly countries, like Australia and Indonesia, but even these entities may fall afoul of the rules if they are deemed to be under the control of the Chinese government.  Even off-take agreements with Chinese buyers – and for EVs they act as close to a monopsony – may be deemed to bring too much CCP influence to bear.

Miners, justifiably, want rules that speed up and incentivize domestic production, not least because the time from resource discovery to mine production is often counted in decades.  The convoluted US permitting system also provides almost zero certainty that investments in new mines will pay off – no matter to what extent miners dot environmental i’s and cross social license to operate t’s.  

The one-two punch by US and European authorities may end up bringing the much talked about – and yearned for – premium pricing for metals and minerals supplied by Western firms. What it won’t do is make EVs cheaper or reignite sales growth in these markets.

The road not travelled 

While nickel-rich EV batteries will always have a large niche, it’s difficult to shake a sense of what could’ve been: 

The latest and greatest Model Y – the global bestselling EV on a GWh basis – coming out of Tesla’s Texas factory has a NCM 811 battery which uses kilograms of cobalt that approach double digits and more than 50kg of nickel. The Cybertruck uses NCA for now, but the bestselling truck in the US, the Rivian R1T is moving to LFP so that the California startup can stop making up in volume what they lose per sale.

Imagine selling 20 million a year – as Musk promised – of these workhorses. Instead, the unwanted tonnes of Ni-Co-Mn will only pile higher and higher. Or stay buried.  

According to China’s automobile association, November was the first one million month for electric car sales and December is likely to top that. The US market is expanding by more than 50% year on year and penetration rates are still in single digits.  

Germany is betting its industrial future, if not its national pride, on the ability to catch up to China in the electric car business. But at the moment three gasoline powered cars leave autohaus lots for each with a charging cable in the frunk. 

South Korea is the world’s sixth largest EV market in terms of battery power rolling onto roads in 2023 and the only country that rivals China in battery output despite the absence of LFP capacity. Yet EV penetration is 11% south of the DMZ. As for Japan, its power hours fall short of Belgium’s.             

How much of China’s lead can be ascribed to LFP remains up for discussion considering all the moving parts in the EV supply chain. But it’s safe to say China would not have been able to deploy more battery power in electric cars last year than the next 50 countries combined if it hadn’t. 

Sodium on the podium

Vehicle electrification is the biggest thing to happen to the automotive and mining industries in a century. The green energy transition more broadly is allowing mining to step outside the shadow of oil and gas. 

Crucially, for the first time metal extraction aligns with the goals of the environmental movement (even though the message does not seem to be getting through). 

But the story of how LFP crashed into battery metals illuminates something else about mining. 

Apart from gold which is money, the arrival of EVs has exposed the industry to the vagaries of technological change like never before. 

LFP has severely dented nickel and cobalt prospects and after all metal pricing is all about the marginal tonnes. The next thing to come out of a lab could turn the mine that took decades to build into a white elephant. Substitution has and will keep miners awake at night.  

Can sodium-ion batteries do to lithium-ion what iron phosphate did to nickel and cobalt?

BYD broke ground on its first $1.3 billion sodium-ion battery plant just today. Three former Tesla executives have set up a sodium-ion company and the first sodium-ion EVs could go on sale soon and sodium could also salt the field of stationary energy storage. 

Until now graphite has been immune to changing chemistries, but the hard carbon anode used for sodium-ion cells can be made from food scraps. Can solid state lithium batteries, which can also do away with graphite for the anode, nix the parts sodium doesn’t?

Crude awakening

Unlike in mining, oil and gas demand destruction is not an intrinsic part of technological progress – at least not one that can play out over a few short years like cobalt and nickel free cells. As the outcome of COP28 showed, it must be imposed.  

Indonesia, Russia and the Philippines control some three-quarters of global nickel supply, 70% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Congo and additional tonnes will mostly come from Indonesia. 

If copper – ground zero for the energy transition – was crude and output could be turned up or down after a secretariate meeting in Vienna, Chile would be Saudi Arabia and all the Gulf states combined. It would be Peru’s sovereign wealth fund dangling $1 billion in front of a French soccer player. 

But as platinum group metal watchers must realise by now, establishing an Opec+ style cartel will forever be a pipe dream in mining. 

Nickel is not the new gold and no, lithium is not the new oil. 

Yet here we are. 

Back at the salt mines. 

A year where the gold price sets an all-time record should be unalloyed good news for the mining and exploration industry, which despite all the buzz surrounding battery metals and the energy transition still represents the backbone of the junior market.

Metal and mineral markets are volatile at the best of times – the nickel, cobalt and lithium price collapse in 2023 was extreme but not entirely unprecedented. Rare earth producers, platinum group metal watchers, iron ore followers, and gold and silver bugs for that matter, have been through worse.

Mining companies have become better at navigating choppy waters, but the forced closure of one of the biggest copper mines to come into production in recent decades served as a stark reminder of the outsized risks miners face over and above market swings.

Panama shuts down giant copper mine

After months of protests and political pressure, at the end of November the Panama government ordered the closure of First Quantum Minerals’ Cobre Panama mine following a ruling by the Supreme Court that declared the mining contract for the operation unconstitutional.

Public figures including climate activist Greta Thunberg and Hollywood actor Leonardo Di Caprio backed the protests and shared a video calling for the “mega mine” to cease operations, which quickly went viral. 

FQM’s latest statement on Friday said Panama’s government hasn’t provided a legal basis to the Vancouver-based company for pursuing the closure plan, a plan that the industries ministry of the central American nation said will only be presented in June next year.

FQM has filed two notices of arbitration over the closure of the mine, which has not been operating since protesters blocked access to its shipping port in October. However, arbitration would not be the company’s preferred outcome, said CEO Tristan Pascall.

In the aftermath of the unrest, FQM has said it should have better communicated the value of the $10 billion mine to the wider public, and will now spend more time engaging with Panamanians ahead of a national election next year. FQM shares have bounced in the past week, but is still trading more than 50% below the high hit during July this year.

Projected copper deficit evaporates

Cobre Panama’s shutdown and unexpected operational disruptions forcing copper mining companies to slash output has seen the sudden removal of around 600,000 tons of expected supply would, moving the market from a large expected surplus into balance, or even a deficit.

The next couple of years were supposed to be a time of plenty for copper, thanks to a series of big new projects starting up around the world.

The expectation across most of the industry was for a comfortable surplus before the market tightens again later this decade when surging demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure is expected to collide with a lack of new mines.

Instead, the mining industry has highlighted how vulnerable supply can be — whether due to political and social opposition, the difficulty of developing new operations, or simply the day-to-day challenge of pulling rocks up from deep beneath the earth.

Lithium price routed on supply surge

The price of lithium was decimated in 2023, but predictions for next year are far from rosy. Lithium demand from electric vehicles is still growing rapidly, but the supply response has overwhelmed the market.

Global lithium supply, meanwhile, will jump by 40% in 2024, UBS said earlier this month, to more than 1.4 million tons of lithium carbonate equivalent.

Output in top producers Australia and Latin America will rise 22% and 29% respectively, while that in Africa is expected to double, driven by projects in Zimbabwe, the bank said.

Chinese production will also jump 40% in the next two years, said UBS, driven by a major CATL project in southern Jiangxi province.

The investment bank expects Chinese lithium carbonate prices could fall by more than 30% next year, dipping as low as 80,000 yuan ($14,800) per tonne in 2024, averaging at around 100,000 yuan, equivalent to production costs in Jiangxi, China’s biggest producing region of the chemical.

Lithium assets still in high demand

In October, Albemarle Corp. walked away from its $4.2 billion takeover of Liontown Resources Ltd., after Australia’s richest woman built up a blocking minority and effectively scuppered one of the largest battery-metals deals to date.

Eager to add new supply, Albemarle had pursued its Perth-based target for months, eying its Kathleen Valley project — one of Australia’s most promising deposits. Liontown agreed to the US company’s “best and final” offer of A$3 a share in September — a near 100% premium to the price before Albemarle’s takeover interest was made public in March.

Albemarle had to contend with the arrival of combative mining tycoon Gina Rinehart, as her Hancock Prospecting steadily built up a 19.9% stake in Liontown. Last week, she became the single largest investor, with enough clout to potentially block a shareholder vote on the deal.

In December, SQM teamed up with Hancock Prospecting to make a sweetened A$1.7 billion ($1.14 billion) bid for Australian lithium developer Azure Minerals, the three parties said on Tuesday.

The deal would give the world’s no.2 lithium producer SQM a foothold in Australia with a stake in Azure’s Andover project and a partnership with Hancock, which has rail infrastructure and local experience in developing mines.

Chile, Mexico take control of lithium

This week Chile’s President Gabriel Boric hailed the formation of a new government-controlled lithium partnership that fuses assets of state-run Codelco with private miner SQM, as the leftist leader advances his push for greater public control over the battery metal. 

SQM said it would partner with copper giant Codelco for the future development and production of the metal in the Atacama salt flat, in a tie-up set to kick off in 2025 and run through 2060.

The deal gives Codelco majority control in line with the president’s plans announced in April to strengthen state control of lithium to generate more broad-based benefits from surging demand and to allow only public-private partnerships to participate in its exploitation.

For much of the year, the firms had been locked in talks over the future of lithium mining and production in the salt flat, located in Chile’s north and the home to 90% of the nation’s lithium reserves. The South American country has the world’s largest proven lithium reserves.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in February signed a decree handing over responsibility for lithium reserves to the energy ministry.

Lopez Obrador urged the private sector to work with the new state miner, saying the size of the investment needed means the government needs partners.

But analysts argue that companies are more likely to focus near-term investments in Chile or Argentina’s sprawling salt flats, where industries are more established and policies more market-friendly.

In August, Chinese lithium giant Ganfeng said Mexico’s mining authorities had issued a notice to its local subsidiaries indicating nine of its concessions had been terminated.

Gold to build on record-setting year

The New York futures price of gold set an all-time high at the beginning of December and looks set to surpass the peak going into the new year. 

London’s gold price benchmark hit an all-time high of $2,069.40 per troy ounce at an afternoon auction on Wednesday, surpassing the previous record of $2,067.15 set in August 2020, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) said.

“I can think of no clearer demonstration of gold’s role as a store of value than the enthusiasm with which investors across the world have turned to the metal during the recent economic and geopolitical turmoils,” said LMBA’s chief executive officer Ruth Crowell. 

JPMorgan predicted a new record back in July but expected the new high to occur in the second quarter of 2024. The basis of JPMorgan’s optimism for 2024 – falling US interest rates – remains intact:

“The bank has an average price target of $2,175 an ounce for bullion in the final quarter of 2024, with risks skewed to the upside on a forecast for a mild US recession that’s likely to hit sometime before the Fed starts easing.”

Even as gold climbed new peaks, exploration spending on the precious metal dipped. A study published in November overall mining exploration budgets fell this year for the first time since 2020, dropping 3% to $12.8 billion at the 2,235 companies that allocated funds to find or expand deposits.

Despite the sparkling gold price, gold exploration budgets, which historically have been driven more by the junior mining sector than any other metal or mineral, dropped by 16% or $1.1 billion year-on-year to just under $6 billion, representing 46% of the global total. 

That’s down from 54% in 2022 amid higher spending on lithium, nickel and other battery metals, a surge in spending on uranium and rare earths and an uptick for copper. 

Mining’s year of M&A, spin-offs, IPOs, and SPAC deals

In December, speculation about Anglo American (LON: AAL) becoming the target of a takeover by a rival or a private equity firm mounted, as weakness in the shares of the diversified miner persisted.

If Anglo American doesn’t turn operations around and its share price continues to lag, Jefferies analysts say they can’t “rule out the possibility that Anglo is involved in the broader trend of industry consolidation,” according to their research note.

In October, Newcrest Mining shareholders voted strongly in favour of accepting the roughly $17 billion buyout bid from global gold mining giant Newmont Corporation.

Newmont (NYSE: NEM) plans to raise $2 billion in cash through mine sales and project divestments following the acquisition. The acquisition brings the company’s value to around $50 billion and adds five active mines and two advanced projects to Newmont’s portfolio.

Breakups and spin-offs were also a big part of 2023 corporate developments.

After being rebuffed several times in its bid to buy all of Teck Resources, Glencore and its Japanese partner are in a better position to bring the $9 billion bid for the diversified Canadian miner’s coal unit to a close. Glencore CEO Gary Nagle’s initial bid for the entire company faced stiff opposition from Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government and from the premier of British Columbia, where the company is based.

Vale (NYSE: VALE) is not seeking new partners for its base metals unit following a recent equity sale, but could consider an IPO for the unit within three or four years, CEO Eduardo Bartolomeo said in October.

Vale recruited former Anglo American Plc boss Mark Cutifani in April to lead an independent board to oversee the $26-billion copper and nickel unit created in July when the Brazilian parent company sold 10% to Saudi fund Manara Minerals.

Shares in Indonesian copper and gold miner, PT Amman Mineral Internasional, have surged more than fourfold since listing in July and are set to keep rising after its inclusion in major emerging market indexes in November.

Amman Mineral’s $715 million IPO was the largest in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy this year and counted on strong demand by global and domestic funds.

Not all dealmaking went smoothly this year.

Announced in June, a $1 billion metals deal by blank-cheque fund ACG Acquisition Co to acquire a Brazilian nickel and and a copper-gold mine from Appian Capital, was terminated in September.

The deal was backed by Glencore, Chrysler parent Stellantis and Volkswagen’s battery unit PowerCo through an equity investment, but as nickel prices slumped there was a lack of interest from minority investors at the stage of the $300 million equity offering which ACG planned as part of the deal.

Talks in 2022 to acquire the mines also fell through after bidder Sibanye-Stillwater pulled out. That transaction is now the subject of legal proceedings after Appian filed a $1.2 billion claim against the South African miner.

Uranium upsurge

In late November uranium prices scaled $80 per pound for the first time in 15 years, driven by a resurgence in demand for nuclear power and supply disruptions.

Global yellowcake supply might reach 145 million lb. this year or next according to the World Nuclear Association. But annual demand is already at 180 million lb. and the industry group expects it to nearly double to 300 million lb. by 2040.

Some 60 nuclear plants are under construction globally and more are planned. Countries like Germany and Japan that considered phasing them out are reversing course.

Activity in northern Saskatchewan’s Athabasca uranium hotspot is intensifying. NexGen received environmental approval for its Rook I project in November, the province’s first OK for such a project in two decades. Denison Mines released a feasibility study for its Wheeler River project before investing in junior explorer F3 Uranium’s Patterson Lake North property.

Also, IsoEnergy took over Consolidated Uranium in September. Uranium Energy spent C$570 million over the past two years buying Uranium One, UEX Corp. and Rio Tinto’s Roughrider project. Cameco and Brookfield Renewable Partners in October closed their deal to buy Westinghouse’s nuclear plant construction unit for $7.9 billion.

Nickel nosedive

In April, Indonesia’s PT Trimegah Bangun Persada, better known as Harita Nickel, raised 10 trillion rupiah ($672 million) in what was then Indonesia’s largest initial public offering of the year. 

Harita Nickel’s IPO quickly turned sour for investors, however, as prices for the metal entered a steady and long decline. Nickel is the worst performer among the base metals, nearly halving in value after starting 2023 trading above $30,000 a tonne.

Next year is not looking great for the devil’s copper either with top producer Nornickel predicting a widening surplus due to lacklustre demand from electric vehicles and a ramp-up in supply from Indonesia, which also comes with a thick layer of cobalt:

“…due to the continuing destocking cycle in the EV supply chain, a greater share of non-nickel LFP batteries, and a partial shift from BEV to PHEV sales in China. Meanwhile, the launch of new Indonesian nickel capacities continued at a high pace.” 

Palladium also had a rough year, down by more than a third in 2023 despite a late charge from multi-year lows hit at the start of December. Palladium was last trading at $1,150 an ounce.

China flexes its critical mineral muscle

In July China announced it will clamp down on exports of two obscure yet crucial metals in an escalation of the trade war on technology with the US and Europe.

Beijing said exporters will need to apply for licenses from the commerce ministry if they want to start or continue to ship gallium and germanium out of the country and will be required to report details of the overseas buyers and their applications.

China is overwhelmingly the top source of both metals — accounting for 94% of gallium supply and 83% of germanium, according to a European Union study on critical raw materials this year. The two metals have a vast array of specialist uses across chipmaking, communications equipment and defence.

In October, China said it would require export permits for some graphite products to protect national security. China is the world’s top graphite producer and exporter. It also refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into the material that is used in virtually all EV battery anodes, which is the negatively charged portion of a battery.

US miners said China’s move underscores the need for Washington to ease its own permit review process. Nearly one-third of the graphite consumed in the United States comes from China, according to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents auto supply chain companies.

In December, Beijing banned the export of technology to make rare earth magnets on Thursday, adding it to a ban already in place on technology to extract and separate the critical materials.

Rare earths are a group of 17 metals used to make magnets that turn power into motion for use in electric vehicles, wind turbines and electronics.

While Western countries are trying to launch their own rare earth processing operations, the ban is expected to have the biggest impact on so-called “heavy rare earths,” used in electric vehicle motors, medical devices and weaponry, where China has a virtual monopoly on refining.

To be able to create the OLEDs, the scientists first manufactured a new environmentally friendly and cost-effective bright green light-emitting manganese complex called MnBz.

Until now, one of the most popular commercial methods for fabricating OLEDs was the solution processing approach. However, while the fabrication process of such LED itself is low-cost and simple, the raw materials used during the solution process often include precious and expensive metals driving up the fabrication costs.
 
Studies have shown that low-dimensional complexes of earth-abundant transition metals could be the key to solving this problem. Thus, to develop a promising solution using this approach, the Dongguk team led by Vijaya Gopalan Sree attempted to synthesize zero-dimensional manganese (Mn)-based complexes via solution processing.

“Replacing expensive metals like gold and platinum with crystalline earth-abundant transition metal complexes can help achieve lightning solutions or displays that are cheaper yet bright and vibrant,” Sree said.
 
In this study, which was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, Sree and his colleagues synthesized MnBz by subjecting manganese bromide (MnBr2) and benzyl-triphenylphosphonium bromide (Ph3BzPBr) to solvent-free grinding, followed by dissolution in acetonitrile solvent. The resulting solution was slowly evaporated over days to obtain single crystals of MnBz. The obtained MnBz exhibited bright green-light emissions with a narrow emission spectrum and high quantum yield.
 
The team then used the single crystals of MnBz to design a novel Mn(II) complex-based warm-white light-emitting device, which exhibited an excellent colour rendering index (CRI) of 78. MnBz was also used to design a green phosphorescent OLED device, which exhibited excellent performance. These light emitters displayed a record-breaking quantum efficiency of 11.42% and a current efficiency of 56.84 cd A-1.
 
The exceptional brightness of these MnBz-based devices in response to low turn-on voltages can pave the way for energy-efficient OLED-based consumer electronics and lighting systems.

“Our new eco-friendly and cost-effective light emitter can facilitate developments towards a wider adoption of OLEDs and ultimately impact people’s lives by transforming the way we interact with and illuminate our world,” Sree said.

Both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated $6bn of credits for batteries and the critical minerals required to make them, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes a subsidy of up to $7,500 for each new energy vehicle, explicitly exclude any “Foreign Entity Of Concern” (FEOC).

That term hadn’t been defined until Friday, when the Department of Energy and US Treasury confirmed it would apply to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The administration is also proposing tough criteria, including a 25% ownership threshold, for determining whether a company is controlled by a FEOC.

Given China’s dominant position in the global battery supply chain, often in the form of joint ventures with Western partners, the new rules could have far-reaching consequences for critical mineral producers just about everywhere.

Time-line tensions

The proposed FEOC rules, which are open to a 30-day consultation, mean that from next year no clean-energy vehicle can qualify for a subsidy if it contains any battery components that are manufactured or assembled by a FEOC.

Beginning in 2025, the restrictions will widen to include any critical minerals in the battery that are extracted, processed or recycled by a FEOC.

There is some wriggle-room granted for “non-traceable battery materials” in electrolyte salts, electrode binders and electrolyte additives. These, typically accounting for less than 2% of the value of critical minerals in the battery, will be exempt until 2027.

That delayed time-line has infuriated Senator Joe Manchin, the original architect of the linkage between EV subsidy and mineral sourcing in the IRA. He promised to “take every avenue and opportunity to reverse this unlawful, shameful proposed rule.”

However, the simple fact is that, to quote Treasury, “industry tracing of these particular applicable critical mineral production processes is uncommon and third-party standards for doing so are underdeveloped.”

If such materials weren’t exempted, “no car models might have qualified for tax credits next year,” according to John Bozzella, head of US automotive trade group the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

Shifting the supply chain

The FEOC rules are intended to dovetail with the IRA’s requirement that any EV subsidy is contingent on a percentage of all material inputs being sourced either domestically or from a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partner. The percentage threshold rises from 30% this year to 80% in 2027.

The aim is clearly to incentivize the build-out of a domestic mine-to-battery supply chain and simultaneously wean US automakers off their dependence on China.

But it poses significant problems for both countries and companies that have partnered with Chinese entities for the supply of battery inputs such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.

Indonesia, for example, has emerged as the world’s largest nickel producer in recent years.

It does not have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States and its request for even limited talks on a critical minerals deal has been shunted into the slow lane.

That’s because Indonesia’s nickel sector is dominated by Chinese players, who have pioneered processing the country’s relatively low-grade nickel deposits into high-purity battery inputs such as nickel sulphate.

As things stand, only a handful of operators such as state-owned Antam and Vale Indonesia could pass the FEOC hurdle in the event Indonesia reached a trade agreement with the United States.

Even many companies operating in an FTA partner country such as Australia are unlikely to qualify for the IRA tax largesse given many are in joint ventures with Chinese players.

The Greenbushes mine, the world’s largest producer of lithium concentrates, is 26% owned by Chinese-owned Tianqi Lithium, while the Mt Marion lithium mine is 50% owned by China’s Ganfeng Lithium, according to analysts at Project Blue.

Even a mine that has no Chinese ownership won’t qualify for IRA subsidies if the raw material is processed at a Chinese or Chinese-controlled processing plant.

Ripple effects

China currently accounts for almost two-thirds of the world’s lithium processing capacity, 75% of its cobalt capacity, 95% of its manganese capacity and just about all of its graphite capacity.

It is, however, short of mined raw materials and has locked in future supply via equity holdings in each metallic stream of the battery chain.

The country’s overseas partners may now have to think long and hard if they don’t want to be excluded from the US market for new energy vehicles.

There is likely to be much reshuffling of corporate structures, although that may not be enough to pass the Department of Energy’s “effective control” test.

“Effective control” is interpreted to mean a FEOC using technology licensing or contractual off-take terms to control an entity’s production and processing.

There is also likely to be much investment in new Western capacity that is not tied to China.

That is of course the whole purpose of the IRA-FEOC package but in the short term there may be more losers than winners in the global battery supply chain.

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)

(Editing by Sharon Singleton)

Activists with Greenpeace International have been ordered to vacate a research vessel charted by The Metals Company (NASDAQ: TMC), a pioneer in seafloor polymetallic nodule exploration in the central-eastern Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico.The Nov. 30 ruling also imposes a €50,000 fine on the environmental organization for each day it defies the order, up to a maximum of €500,000. It does, however, allow Greenpeace to continue its protest, as long as it’s at a distance of at least 500 metres.

The vessel, engaged by TMC’s subsidiary, Nauru Ocean Resources (NORI) for environmental assessments, faced a week of disruptions from Nov. 23 by Greenpeace activities, which a Dutch court deemed unsafe and unlawful. NORI is obligated under an International Seabed Authority (ISA) contract to evaluate the deep ocean’s health after a nodule collection test last year.

“We respect the right to protest, but the safety of our legally sanctioned studies comes first,” stated TMC CEO Gerard Barron in an email to The Northern Miner. “Greenpeace’s compliance with the order is welcomed, as we continue our vital research for informed global decision-making.” A Dutch court held jurisdiction over the dispute because Greenpeace is headquartered in Amsterdam.

The confrontation brings to the fore the tension between environmental activism and the advancement of deep-sea exploration technology. With 168 ISA member states plus the EU emphasizing evidence-based decisions, TMC’s work exemplifies the delicate balance that must be found between economic interests and environmental protection in this emerging sector of mining.

The Greenpeace incident came to a head when, after five days of non-stop kayaking activity around the vessel, five activists boarded the MV Coco on Nov. 25 and disabled its A-frame hoist/crane. That caused delays to TMC’s research and NORI claims the protest has been costing it $1.5 million per day.

Despite being ordered to leave the vessel, Greenpeace hailed the court’s announcement as a victory for its right to protest and as a blow to the deep sea mining industry. “The Metals Company has never been interested in scrutiny, and they can’t stand that Greenpeace is watching and opposing them at every turn,” said Mads Christensen, executive director of Greenpeace International.

As a result of Greenpeace’s actions, TMC and NORI are considering seeking compensation for financial losses incurred. 

Greenpeace has openly criticized TMC’s work as “anti-scientific.” TMC counters that Greenpeace’s anti-science charge is hypocritical, citing its engagement of top marine scientists and collaborative data sharing with public institutions to transparently assess and potentially minimize the environmental footprint of nodule collection compared to traditional mining.

“Our work could redefine how we source battery metals, with potentially lesser impacts compared to traditional mining,” Barron said. “It’s vital that we base our environmental stewardship on solid evidence.”

Scientific research interrupted

Greenpeace has vowed to continue its protests every time TMC attempts to advance its mining application, aligning with the political calls for a moratorium from 24 countries.

TMC’s current work aims to assess ecosystem function and recovery on the seafloor one year after test mining. It’s been active at the project for 12 years.

NORI conducted a successful test last fall, collecting over 3,000 tonnes of polymetallic nodules. However, the company has been criticized for its environmental risk management practices after a leaked video late last year showed waste sediment being dumped into the ocean. An ISA investigation found no rule breach but criticized NORI’s ‘risk awareness,’ citing the company’s failure to follow its risk management procedures.

Environmental groups and some countries call for a halt or ban on deep-sea mining, warning of unacceptable risks to marine life and ecosystems. A recent report also suggests that the environmental costs of seabed mining could outweigh the benefits.

Using an array of equipment like remotely operated vehicles and marine sampling tools called box/multicores, academics from various marine research institutions aim to collect biological samples to assess whether there has been a significant change in the makeup of seafloor communities and how much they’ve been affected by the mining.

“Last year’s studies on the seafloor sediment plume have already highlighted that concerns by various non-governmental organizations grossly overstate how far this mud would spread from the direct mining area,” Barron said.

“This latest campaign will help determine if conjecture on the impacts on seafloor organisms is similarly overblown. I can only imagine that our putting to bed of this conjecture is why Greenpeace would seek to disrupt further scientific research.”

This research is not only a legal requirement by the ISA but also a collective effort to enrich the global repository of marine knowledge, the company argues.

Focus on transparency

In response to the boarding incident, TMC has reiterated its commitment to the safety of its crew and the activists involved. The company said it adheres to strict operational protocols, ensuring no harm came from Greenpeace’s unauthorized presence.

Barron said TMC’s exploration efforts, grounded in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea principles, aim to pave a path for responsible resource use, promising a future where the environmental impacts are minimized and developing states benefit from oceanic resources.

The incident also highlights the broader conversation about the ocean’s role in the future of mining. As demand for battery metals soars, driven by the global push towards green energy, the industry must navigate the fine line between resource extraction and environmental conservation. Barron hopes that TMC’s approach, emphasizing open-source data and collaborative research, could set a new standard for responsible deep-sea mining.

The CEO says the company is aware that the world’s eyes are on them. “We are focused on a resource belonging to all humanity. Our approach emphasizes transparency, partnerships, and stakeholder engagement,” he said.

“We believe nodules could be a better alternative to land mining and are working across academia and industry to gather the data to assess whether this hypothesis holds true and sharing this and our plans with the world.”

The IDC financing is the cornerstone of a $26 million funding package that will be used over the next 15 months to progress K.Hill towards a final investment decision (FID), including an optimized feasibility study for the project and operating the company’s demonstration plant for producing battery-grade manganese.

The IDC is a major South African development financing institution with over 80 years of experience investing in industrial companies and the mining sector. It typically invests over $1 billion each year in mining and infrastructure related projects.

“We are delighted to announce the IDC funding as a resounding vote of confidence in K.Hill. This brings on board a strategic partner with significant mining and industrial development experience,” Giyani Metals CEO Danny Keating said in a news release.

“The investment provides the majority of the financing that Giyani requires to de-risk the project through to FID and introduces a partner with a vision and ambition to be involved in the development and capital funding of the project,” Keating said.

The IDC funding comprises two separate loan facilities ($12.5 million and $3.5 million) with similar terms attached. Criteria are attached to the IDC facility include the commissioning of the demonstration plant by the first anniversary of the first drawdown date and completion of the optimized feasibility study within 90 days after that.

The remaining $10 million of the funding package is in the process of being secured from a strategic investor that has completed its due diligence and is currently in the final documentation stage.

K.Hill is a near-surface manganese oxide deposit located about 60 km southwest of Gaborone, Botswana’s capital.

A July 2023 preliminary assessment outlined robust economics for the potential open-pit mine, highlighted by a post-tax net present value (at 8% discount) of $984 million and 29.4% internal rate of return. Initial capital expenditure of the K.Hill project is estimated at $284 million.

Over a 57-year project life, K.Hill is expected to supply over 3.5 million tonnes of high-purity manganese sulphate monohydrate to the electric vehicle industry. The mineral ore is processed using a hydrometallurgical process developed by the company, which will be tested by the upcoming demonstration plant.

K.Hill is not the only manganese project to secure major financing recently. Earlier in the week, Euro Manganese (TSXV, ASX: EMN) signed definitive agreements with Orion Resource Partners Group for a $100 million financing to advance the Chvaletice project in the Czech Republic.

Exxaro, one of South Africa’s top coal producers, also has interests in iron ore and renewable energy. The company plans to acquire manganese and copper assets, both minerals considered vital for the global transition from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy.

The miner was among several firms that were interested in buying Botswana’s Khoemacau copper mine, which holds one of Africa’s largest copper deposits. The $1.88 billion mine was eventually sold to Chinese miner MMG Ltd.

Exxaro’s chief growth officer Richard Lilleike, who is leading the miner’s mergers and acquisitions drive, told analysts that while the company was still interested in producing assets, it would also consider development projects in light of current elevated asset prices.

“In the wake of Koemacau … we certainly are seeing a lot of investment opportunities mostly on the earlier stage capital raising. I think capital markets are quite tough right now and therefore our balance sheet stands out as a partner to new assets or assets under development,” Lilleike said during a call.

Exxaro said it had a net cash balance of 13.5 billion rand ($728.3 million) at the end of October, as it builds a war chest of up to 15 billion rand to fund acquisitions.

The company is selling off its ferroalloys unit, which it says does not fit into its long-term strategy. The unit produces ferrosilicon, mostly used in steelmaking. It plans to complete the sale by June 2024.

Exxaro expects its coal production to be flat at 43 million metric tons in the year to Dec. 31, in line with previous guidance. Export sales are also seen flat this year at just over 5 million tons, amid persistent freight rail logistics challenges.

($1 = 18.5377 rand)

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Mark Potter)

The funding is split into two $50 million components: a $50 million loan facility, convertible into a 1.29-1.65% royalty on project revenues and another $50 million in exchange for a 1.93-2.47% royalty on project revenues following a final investment decision by the company’s board of directors and other conditions typical for this type of financing.

The Chvaletice project in the Czech Republic is the only sizeable, classified resource of manganese in the European Union. The project entails re-processing manganese deposits contained in waste (tailings) from a decommissioned mine that operated between 1951 and 1975.

Euro Manganese plans to convert the carbonate to high-purity manganese metal and sulphate and send them to its planned processing facility in Quebec, where they will be converted into a liquid sulphate. The site is adjacent to two proposed cathode plants, allowing the liquid sulphate to be piped directly into the cathode production processes.

Shares of Euro Manganese surged 71% by 12:10 p.m. EDT in Toronto. The company has a market capitalization of C$64 million ($47 million).

Among the chief insights were the extreme volatility of the lithium market, which Andy Leyland, Managing Director, Supply Chain Insights, sees continuing. That’s especially the case because there are no above ground lithium stocks and substitution isn’t possible without a big hit to performance, he noted.

Supply is quickly climbing from about 22 lithium mines operating six years ago to 60 now, and roughly 200 expected by the end of the decade.

“The difference between a very high price and a very low price is 199 versus 201 operations,” he said. “We saw that a few years ago. When the market went to 32 operations, but it only needed 31, two of them went bust. Then nobody invested for a few years and the price shot up. So it’s gonna be a very volatile market.”

Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel (TSXV: CNC), which is advancing its Crawford nickel project in Ontario, said there’s room for multiple battery chemistries in the market.

“I think that’s where investors stumble — they have to say, oh, there’s one winner and everything else by definition is then a loser,” he said.

However, Selby said it’s more likely that we’ll have a differentiated market with options ranging from entry-level to premium based on performance.

Selby also said that even though technology is evolving, he’s not worried about nickel substitution.

“Nickel is the metal that has the highest energy density… People are always trying to find ways to jam more nickel into the battery.”

Watch the entire conversation, moderated by Northern Miner Group President Anthony Vaccaro:

The most-prominent of the three proposed types of deep-sea mining involves using a giant robot that is sent down to the ocean floor from a support vessel.

This robot travels to depths of roughly 5,000 meters to the ocean floor — the least explored place on the planet.

The seafloor, especially in parts of the Pacific Ocean, is covered by potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules that are filled with metals used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

Many scientists say it’s unclear whether and to what extent removing these nodules could damage the ocean’s ecosystem. Automaker BMW, tech giant Google and even Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, have called for a temporary ban on the practice.

Composed of manganese, nickel, copper, cobalt and other trace minerals, these nodules hold some of the key ingredients needed to fuel the energy transition.

The metals in those nodules can be used to build electric vehicle (EV) batteries, cell phones, solar panels and other electronic devices. They are separate from rare earths, a group of 17 metals also used in EVs.

With climate change escalating, governments are under pressure to rein in emissions – especially from the transportation sector, which was responsible for about 20% of global emissions in 2022.

By 2040, the world will need to use twice the amount of these metals as it is using today in order to meet global energy transition targets, according to the International Energy Agency. And the world will need at least four times today’s amount in reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

Many of the minerals that go into making an EV are becoming harder to find on land, pushing up mining costs in recent years. That’s increased prices for EVs and other electronics after they had fallen for years up to 2020. A typical EV needs six times more minerals in total than a vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine.

The scarcity and rising demand has made some governments and companies eager to allow mining in the oceans, which cover more than 70% of the planet’s surface.

First discovered by British sailors in 1873, the potato-shaped polymetallic nodules take millions of years to form as minerals in the seawater precipitate onto pieces of sand, shell fragments or other small materials.

Minerals are also found near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where they’re called vent sulfides, and within seamounts known as ferromanganese crusts. Processes for extracting these minerals are similar to land-based mining, but harder to do underwater. That’s partly why the nodules are so appealing.

Land vs sea?

The mining industry has long had a mixed reputation on land. While it supplies the materials used to build our modern lives, it has contributed to deforestation, produced large amounts of toxic waste and in some parts of the world has fueled a rise in child labor. In 2019, a tailings dam — a structure that stores the muddy waste byproduct of the mining process — collapsed and killed hundreds of people at an iron ore mine in Brazil.

The average grade of mines on land — that is, the percentage of minerals extracted with every metric ton of rock — has declined over the last decade, requiring miners to dig deeper to extract the same amount of minerals.

All of these factors make deep-sea mining more appealing, supporters say. Environmentalists, however, say it’s a false dichotomy, as land mining will continue whether or not deep-sea mining is allowed.

Any country can allow deep-sea mining in its territorial waters, and Norway, Japan and the Cook Islands are close to allowing it. The International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is backed by the United Nations, governs the practice in international waters. The ISA missed a July 2023 deadline for setting standards for acceptable sediment disturbance, noise and other factors from deep-sea mining – a bureaucratic misstep that now allows anyone to apply for a commercial mining permit while the ISA continues negotiations.

“What are the alternatives if we don’t go to the ocean for these metals? The only alternative is more land mining and more pushing into sensitive ecosystems, including rainforests,” said Gerard Barron, CEO of Vancouver-based The Metals Co, the most-vocal deep-sea mining company and one of 31 companies to which the ISA has granted permits to explore for – but not yet commercially produce – deep-sea minerals.

Other companies with exploration permits include Russia’s JSC Yuzhmorgeologiya, Blue Minerals Jamaica, China Minmetals, and Kiribati’s Marawa Research and Exploration. Their potential future activities are seen as augmenting mining on land.

Where are these minerals?

The Metals Co — which is backed by metals giant Glencore — plans to use the robot to vacuum polymetallic nodules off a vast plain of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ).

The company wants the ISA to set deep-sea mining standards, but said it reserves the right to apply for a commercial permit after July 2024 if the regulatory process stalls again. The ISA has said its work may not finish before 2025.

Companies need ISA members to sponsor them before they can apply for exploration or commercial permits. The island nation of Nauru, which is slowly being engulfed by the Pacific Ocean and sees deep-sea mining as key to the world’s energy transition, has sponsored The Metals Co.

Slowing the pace of climate change will be key for climate-vulnerable countries like Nauru if they hope to have a chance of adapting.

“Our existence is being threatened by the global climate crisis,” said Margo Deiye, Nauru’s ambassador to the United Nations and ISA. “We don’t have the luxury of time. This is quite a new nascent industry. Having clear guidelines in place, including standards, would be really helpful.”

Data from the U.S. Geological Survey and others show that the CCZ – which covers roughly 1.3% of the world’s ocean floor – contains more nickel, cobalt and manganese than all on-land deposits, a staggering volume that supporters say shows the practice should move forward. For copper, the CCZ’s deposits are roughly equal with those on land.

Multiple companies have been collecting small numbers of nodules as part of their robot tests in the Abyssal Zone, the part of the ocean below 2,000 meters. One such study is being conducted during November. If the ISA grants The Metals Co a commercial permit, the nodules will be sent to a refinery in Japan where the metals will be processed. The company says it will sell all parts of the nodules and thus there will be no waste byproduct beyond extraneous sand.

The Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific Ocean are also rich in mineral deposits.

A March 2023 study conducted by the metals consultancy Benchmark Mineral Intelligence found that The Metals Co’s plans for the CCZ would cut mining emissions by at least 70%. The study focused on seven criteria, including contributions to ozone depletion and global warming. The study did find that on-land cobalt mining used less water, however. “We’re not talking about mining all of the ocean,” said Barron of The Metals Co, which funded the Benchmark study but said it had no control over its results. “We’re talking about one little patch.”

Deposits of nodules, crusts, and vent sulfides can be found globally, but only a fraction of these areas are being explored and are considered areas of economic interest.

The ISA has granted 19 exploration contracts for nodules, seven for vent sulfides and five for crusts. The Metals Co holds one; others are held by governments or state-controlled companies in China, Russia, France, India, Poland and Japan.

Decades of research has shown that deep sea mining could harm marine life or ecosystems. For example, sediment plumes kicked up by the robotic vacuum could disrupt animal migrations, according to one study published in February in Nature Ocean Sustainability.

The full importance of the nodules within the ocean ecosystem is unclear, and nodule regrowth could take millions of years. The nodules provide homes for anemones, barnacles, corals and other life forms, while bacteria and other invertebrates thrive on the ocean floor.

“These nodules are essential ecosystem architects. If you remove the nodules, you will remove the architecture supporting the entire oceanic ecosystem,” said Beth Orcutt, an oceanographer at Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences who participated in the ISA standards debate.

What can be lost forever

The lively nodules

Once thought of as a desert devoid of life, the seabed is now estimated to have an extensive range of biodiversity. A 2016 study found a statistically significant correlation between aquatic life in the CCZ and nodule abundance.

The sediment plume

As the robot moves across the ocean floor, sediment clouds are stirred up and can irritate filter-feeding animals such as the corals and sponges that make nodules their home.

Regrowing corals

Bamboo corals on seamounts, as all corals, grow slowly, just millimeters per year. However, plumes distort habitat and can disrupt growth. When the corals are covered by sediment, their larvae will have trouble finding new sites to attach, some scientists warn.

Octopus nurseries

Four octopus nurseries have been discovered at hydrothermal springs around seamounts in parts of the Pacific Ocean near the CCZ. These springs act as a kind of “warm spa” and boost the metabolic rate of developing octopuses, thus speeding embryonic development. These springs are difficult to find, and mining may destroy some undiscovered springs before they can be protected, Orcutt said.

Hydrothermal vents

Mining is targeted at inactive vents, which have unique habitats that are even less understood than the ecosystems around active vents. The Scaly-foot snail, for example, is found only in a 300 square-km patch of the Indian Ocean near certain vents. It is the first animal listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered due to the threat of deep-sea mining.

Essential microbes

The most susceptible species are those that depend on the unique chemistry of the waters that vent from the seafloor. The nodules have evolved symbiotically with microbes that can turn those weird chemicals into food. Mining also threatens conditions for these tiny microbes, some scientists say.

Irreversible damage

In the deep sea, it takes roughly 10,000 years for the ocean floor sediment layer to grow by just 1 millimeter, a process that includes sequestering carbon. The robotic vacuum’s disturbance reaches 10 centimeters into the seafloor, “basically resuspending a million years’ worth of time of carbon,” says the marine biologist Orcutt.

Discharge plumes

The nodules, once collected, are washed and stored on a ship, with the excess sand dumped back into the ocean. Scientists worry the discarded sand could harm aquatic life, including the plankton at the bottom of the food chain and tuna. The Metals Co says it will discharge sediment at depths below 1,000 meters to avoid most marine life.

Industrial noise

Studies show that loud noises can travel as far as 500 kilometers, impacting communications among marine animals like whales and causing behavioral stresses.

Light pollution

On the seabed, the robotic vacuum’s floodlights can harm shrimp larvae, studies have shown. On the surface, light from vessels that support the robots may affect squid and other aquatic creatures, as well as seabirds. More study is needed, scientists say, to understand potential harm from artificial light.

Human impact

In a March 2023 petition to ISA, more than 1,000 signatories from 34 countries and 56 Indigenous groups called for a total ban on deep-sea mining. Some Indigenous island communities are intimately connected to the ocean for fishing and other cultural traditions and oppose deep-sea mining, setting up a conflict with Nauru, the Cook Islands and other island nations that support it.

Is there a better way?

As the world’s hunger for metals and minerals to go green increasingly clashes with the realities of the mining process, the deep sea has become the latest focal point. Ultimately, manufacturers aim to create a circular “closed-loop” system, where old electronics are recycled and their metals are used to build new products.

But reaching that goal is expected to take decades. Debate about whether sensitive ecosystems on land should be dug up have empowered deep-sea mining advocates. Some companies competing with The Metals Co believe that the robotic vacuum is the problem, and are offering potential solutions.

The startup Impossible Metals has developed a robotic device with a large claw that collects nodules as the claw glides along the seafloor. Using artificial intelligence, the robot’s claw is able to distinguish between nodules and aquatic life, the company says.

“From day one, we are focused on preserving the ecosystem,” said Jason Gillham, the CEO of Impossible Metals. However, while the Impossible Metals robot is battery-powered, its energy comes from a diesel generator on a ship at the ocean’s surface, fueling charges that the company’s methods are not fully green.

A Japanese company plans to start mining next year in territorial waters controlled by Tokyo. Chinese officials have acknowledged they lag behind other nations in the deep-sea race, but are vowing to vigorously compete in this “new frontier for international competition.” China is already exploring a massive part of the Pacific seabed west of Hawaii – an area that dwarfs the CCZ. Norway, already a prolific offshore oil producer, is on track to be the first country to allow deep-sea mining if its parliament approves, as expected, plans to mine hydrothermal vents.

For now, the ISA’s members are hotly debating the best standards for deep-sea mining.

“Nothing we do will have zero impact,” said Joe Carr, a mining engineer with the metals consultancy Axora. “We’re going to need mining for the green energy transition.”

Sources:

NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research, the International Energy Agency, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Beth Orcutt at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Pradeep Singh at Research Institute for Sustainability, Kira Mizell at U.S. Geological Survey, The Metals Co., Impossible Metals, Natural Earth, Blue Earth Bathymetry, International Seabed Authority, InterRidge Vents Database.

(By Daisy Chung, Ernest Scheyder and Clare Trainor; Editing by Julia Wolfe, Katy Daigle and Claudia Parsons)

Multiferroics are a unique class of materials that can be both magnetized and polarized at the same time, which means that they are sensitive to both magnetic and electric fields.

Having both these properties in a single material has made multiferroics very interesting for research and commercial purposes with potential applications from advanced electronics to next-generation memory storage. By understanding and harnessing the properties of these elements, researchers aim to develop more efficient, compact, and even energy-saving technologies.

In the case of Mn-doped GeTe, the “doped” part of the name simply means that a small amount of manganese atoms have been introduced into the germanium telluride crystal structure to modify its properties. 

Mn-doped GeTe is known for its unique ferroelectric and magnetic properties. But the new study, which appeared in Nature Communications, has now found that it also possesses a magnetic order distinct from typical ferromagnets, such as iron, which align with a magnetic field. Instead, the scientists found that Mn-doped GeTe exhibits the characteristics of a ferrimagnet.

A ferrimagnet is like two magnets with slightly different strengths superimposed on top of each other. The discovery that Mn-doped GeTe behaves like this means that it allows for more flexibility to control the direction of magnetization—an essential feature for several technologies.

This proved to be important, as it allowed the scientists to develop a method for enhancing the efficiency of switching magnetization direction by an astounding six orders of magnitude. 

Instead of doing this in the traditional way of applying a large current pulse to Mn-doped GeTe, they instead used a small, constantly fluctuating (AC) electrical current, followed by a tiny current nudge at just the right moment—sort of like pushing a swing at the right time to make it go higher with less effort. The researchers named this phenomenon “stochastic resonance.”

This tiny “nudge” caused a change that spread quickly throughout Mn-doped GeTe, like a ripple in a pond. This happened because the material behaves a bit like a solid and a bit like a liquid—essentially a glass: a change in one part causes a chain reaction that changes other parts.

In other words, the magnetic switch propagated swiftly across the Mn-doped GeTe through collective excitations, which are coordinated collective movements of a large number of electron spins within the material. 

“This is possible because the system forms a correlated spin glass, where the local magnetic moments are in a glassy state, similar to atoms in an old-fashioned window,” Hugo Dil, co-author of the study, said in a media statement. “If one spin is forced to change its orientation, this information will travel like a wave through the sample and cause the other magnetic moments to also switch.”

According to Dil, for technological applications, this increase in switching efficiency is very interesting. 

“It can eventually lead to computers that need less than one-millionth of the currently required energy to switch a bit. However, as a physicist, what really intrigues me is the collective behaviour. We are now planning space-and time-resolved experiments to follow how these excitations spread and how we can control them,” he said.

Volumes transported across the continent’s most industrialized nation by state-owned port and rail operator Transnet SOC Ltd. have declined over recent years due to corruption, mismanagement and a shortage of locomotives. An 861-kilometer (535-mile) line that runs from mines in Sishen to the Port of Saldanha on the west coast and is used by a 4-kilometer-long train that comprises 375 wagons has remained among the most reliable of its operations.

The Logistics Group, owned by Old Mutual Ltd.’s African Infrastructure Investment Managers, saw potential to increase efficiency by building the Saldanha Dry Bulk Terminal, a storage facility that can accept 100 tons per wagon rather than the 63 tons that existing operations in the area can process, CEO Anton Potgieter said. Before signing a single contract, the company “took a leap of faith,” acquired the land and built the 200 million rand ($11 million) project, which includes a warehouse that can accept trains, he said in an interview.

The firm’s roots go back to a co-operative owned by farmers, who used it to export their fruit. That business expanded to cement, fertilizers, containers and manganese before Logistics Group was unbundled in 2018. It then added operations in Mozambique, Namibia and Tanzania.

“We expanded the footprint quite rapidly,” Potgieter said. “With Transnet’s downward spiral there was a lot of cargo that then came available for private operators in the ports.”

Manganese is the fourth-most used metal globally by tonnage. South Africa has about 80% of estimated global reserves of the metal that’s used in steelmaking and is a key component of lithium-ion batteries.

While Transnet’s coal deliveries have fallen to their lowest level in decades, the volume of manganese increased slightly to 14.6 million tons in the 2023 financial year. The state company has requested a government bailout to fix its finances while implementing structural reforms and calling for more private investment.

The Logistics Group submitted a proposal on the Saldanha facility that was “well received” by Transnet, which will help reduce the number of trains needed on the line once the site is operational, Potgieter said.

(By Paul Burkhardt and Matthew Hill)

Tai issued a statement after meeting with British business and trade minister Kemi Badenoch.

The United States and the UK have been negotiating a critical minerals agreement that could allow electric vehicle minerals produced in Britain to count towards tax credits for clean vehicles offered under the US Inflation Reduction Act.

(By Ismail Shakil; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

J&F Investimentos SA, the family holding, emerged as the surprise buyer of Vale’s iron ore and manganese mines in the central west state of Mato Grosso do Sul, their first foray into the metals business. The $1.2 billion assets also included logistics operations.

Since taking over, J&F has already managed to double 2021’s output to 4 million tons and the 5.5 billion reais ($1.1 billion) to be invested going forward should help get output up to 10 million tons by the end of next year and improve logistics, according to a company spokesperson.

Brothers Joesley Batista, 51, and Wesley Batista, 53, have grown the family fortune created by JBS’s global expansion to diversify interests at the holding. They own one of the world’s biggest pulp producers, a bank and companies focused on energy and cosmetics. The family’s biggest holding is a nearly 49% stake in JBS, which is worth about $4.1 billion at the moment.

The budget earmarked for mining is part of a broader 38.5 billion-real investment plan the group unveiled for Brazil between 2023 and 2026.

J&F Mineracao, as the mining unit is called, is planning to build 50 kilometers (31 miles) of rail lines to connect the mines to its Gregorio Curvo port, a route currently made by truck, the spokesperson said. A distribution center was opened last month in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

It will also grow its fleet of barges by adding another 400, according to the spokesperson. Loaded with iron ore, the barges go to Uruguay’s Nueva Palmira port along the Paraguay and Parana rivers. In March, J&F Mineracao performed a transshipment operation that allowed it to export 175,000 tons of iron ore to China in a single vessel — a Capesize, the largest commodity carrier — for the first time, a strategy to reduce freight costs.

Similar to Vale, J&F has a strategy to focus on its higher-grade ore that requires less energy to process as the industry looks to cut emissions. The firm is developing the so-called “natural pellet” that it says could replace up to 30% of iron ore pellets in the “direct reduced iron” method for steelmaking, allowing a drop of 6% to 15% in carbon dioxide emissions.

The Batistas have made a career out of expanding rapidly through acquisitions in the meat business while also eyeing distressed assets that can be recovered through turnaround strategies. It’s not clear yet if the family plans to grow the mining portfolio further, the spokesperson said.

(By Mariana Durao)

Created by a team of researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, the technique also minimizes the loss of nickel, cobalt and manganese and doesn’t require the use of expensive or harmful chemicals, instead relying on oxalic acid – an organic compound that can be found in plants like rhubarb and spinach.

In a paper published in the journal Separation and Purification Technology, the researchers explain that the new method starts with pulverizing the contents of spent lithium-ion cells in a fume cupboard. The result is a finely ground black powder dissolved in a transparent liquid – oxalic acid. Both of these elements are produced in something reminiscent of a kitchen mixer.

By fine-tuning temperature, concentration and time, the researchers have come up with a remarkable new recipe for using oxalic acid.

“We need alternatives to inorganic chemicals. One of the biggest bottlenecks in today’s processes is removing residual materials like aluminum. This is an innovative method that can offer the recycling industry new alternatives and help solve problems that hinder development,” head researcher Martina Petranikova said in a media statement. 

This aqueous-based recycling method is called hydrometallurgy. In traditional hydrometallurgy, all the metals in an EV battery cell are dissolved in an inorganic acid. Then, “impurities” such as aluminum and copper are removed. Lastly, valuable metals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese and lithium can be recovered separately.  Even though the amount of residual aluminum and copper is small, it requires several purification steps and each step can cause lithium loss.

With the new method, the researchers reverse the order and recover the lithium and aluminum first. Thus, they can reduce the waste of valuable metals needed to make new batteries.

The latter part of the process, in which the black mixture is filtered, is reminiscent of brewing coffee. While aluminum and lithium end up in the liquid, the other metals are left in the “solids.” The following phase is to separate aluminum and lithium.

“Since the metals have very different properties, we don’t think it’ll be hard to separate them. Our method is a promising new route for battery recycling – a route that definitely warrants further exploration,”  Léa Rouquette, lead author of the paper, said.

“As the method can be scaled up, we hope it can be used in industry in future years,” Petranikova added.

Petranikova’s group has spent many years conducting research in the recycling of metals found in lithium-ion batteries. The group is involved in various collaborations with companies and is a partner in the Volvo Cars’ and Northvolt’s Nybat project.

The remarks to high-level government officials, executives and academics came Thursday in Paris at the International Energy Agency’s first-ever meeting about critical minerals. Granholm and other speakers repeatedly implied that one country — China — controls much of the world’s processing of materials used in everything from electric vehicles and wind turbines to missile guidance systems.

“In this critical minerals and materials context we are up against a dominant supplier that is willing to weaponize market power for political gain,” Granholm said. “But our global energy crisis has taken on a new dimension, which is the urgency of this clean energy transition.”

Energy security will become more complex over the coming decades as countries require more of the nickel, cobalt, lithium and other materials needed to cut down on global emissions, she said.

The closed-door meeting brought together energy and mining minsters from some 50 countries around the world, in addition to chief executive officers from the world’s largest mining companies and experts in the field of critical minerals. Attendees said the event holds symbolic importance, and formalizes how serious a threat its members view China’s outsized position in critical minerals.

Granholm and other speakers didn’t explicitly identify China by name in their comments, but the Asian nation is known to dominate the entire value chain of many key minerals. China accounts for more than half the world’s production of battery metals including lithium, cobalt and manganese, and as much as 100% of rare earths.

“When we look at both the production and the refining, processing of the critical minerals we see a very high level of concentration,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in opening remarks to the conference. “Looking at the history of energy in the last 100 years, when there was major concentration of one single country, one single company, one single route, there’s always a challenge.”

The US passed sweeping legislation the last few years that would pour billions of dollars in subsidies and tax incentives to boost domestic supply of the materials and batteries needed to shift to an electric fleet of automobiles.

And this past summer, the US Defense Department issued a first-time contract to American or Canadian companies by year-end to recover gallium, a mineral used in semiconductors and military radar systems, after China announced restrictions on the mineral that were seen as part of the country’s tit-for-tat trade war on technology.

(By Joe Deaux)

The companies have also vowed to jointly develop a low-cost, low environmental impact production process for battery cathode materials, which are used in the making of electric vehicles (EVs).

The move comes on the heels of an agreement between Japan and Canada that will see the nations work closely together to establish sustainable and reliable global battery supply chains.

Vancouver-based Nano One has piqued the interest of big mining sector actors, including Rio Tinto, thanks to its patented process for the sustainable production of lithium-ion battery material for cathodes. These are the battery’s two terminals that receive and dispatch electrons. 

“This announcement builds on years of technology development and CAM production by both Sumitomo Metal Mining and Nano One Materials,” Nano One CEO, Dan Blondal, said in a separate statement.

Sumitomo Metals’ move represents the first time a producer of cathode active materials (CAM) has invested in Nano One, the companies said. Through the investment, it will own about 5% of the Canadian company.

Multibillion dollar market

The Tokyo-based vertically integrated miner, refiner and maker of CAM has been expanding its production capacity of cathode materials and plans further expansions.

In terms of annual capacity, its plan is to boost it from the current 60,000 tonnes to 84,000 tonnes in FY2025, 120,000 tonnes in FY2027 and 180,000 tonnes in FY2030.

Nano One has plans to build its first commercial lithium iron phosphate (LFP) plant adjacent to its existing production scale pilot facility in Candiac, Québec. The company is nearing completion of a Front-End Loading Pre-Feasibility Study (FEL-2) that will help determine key factors including costs, production line size, total capacity and timing.

Securing cathode materials, such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, presently involves a complex supply chain, and they account for around a quarter of the cost of a lithium-ion battery. 

Forecasts expects the global market for cathode elements to grow form a $25.9 billion value in 2022 to $52.6 billion by 2027.

“This is not about China,” Jose Fernandez, the US under secretary for economic growth and the environment, told a briefing in New York. “We are perfectly happy to work with them on this and right now we purchase many of the minerals from Chinese companies. It’s about diversifying.”

China’s key role in the processing of raw minerals means it will remain a key US partner, Fernandez said, especially because those minerals are a crucial component for the batteries that power electric vehicles. The broader use of EVs is a central tenet of the administration’s climate change efforts.

“The world needs them to be involved — the broader picture is climate change, and we’re not going to solve the climate crisis without the involvement of the PRC,” he said, referring to the country’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China.

Fernandez leads a State Department initiative called the Minerals Security Partnership, which aims to help funnel foreign investment and western expertise into the mining sectors of developing nations that help supply key raw materials such as lithium, manganese and cobalt.

“China is the second-largest economy in the world, a major trading partner of the US,” he said. “We will continue working with them while pursuing our interests and protecting our companies and criticizing them when we feel they should be criticized.”

(By Iain Marlow)

In a paper published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers at the University of São Paulo’s Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture estimated the figures and inferred that such an amount of CO2e corresponds to about 5% of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions from human activities.

According to the scientists, Brazil has 5.4 million hectares of active legal mines, almost equivalent to Croatia’s landmass. Legal mines are located all over the country, but most are in subtropical and tropical areas and have the largest soil organic carbon stocks, estimated at 1.05 Gt CO2e.

Given this situation, the team led by Tiago Osório Ferreira suggests that post-mine reclamation involving the reconstruction of soils using mine tailings and other residues such as domestic and industrial waste could be the solution to offset emissions. Their calculations show that these anthropic soils, known as Technosols, could potentially offset up to 60% (1 Gt CO2e) of soil-related CO2 emissions.

“When we thought about carbon stocks, the first step was to analyze emissions. Although most previous research focused on the impact of ore processing via the burning of fuel and electricity consumption, for example, open-cast mining in pits is the rule in Brazil and the rest of the world, and the soil is the main terrestrial carbon storage ecosystem. When the soil is removed, organic matter and vegetation change, releasing CO2. We estimated potential emissions from the removal of soil and vegetation at 2.55 GT CO2e,” Francisco Ruiz, lead author of the paper, said in a media statement. 

For Ruiz and Osório Ferreira, Technosols can be a productive path to decarbonization as they can become a stable form of carbon storage. In addition to this, they can restore essential ecosystem services such as food and energy production or protection of biodiversity, water quality and nutrient cycling. Properly treated to neutralize toxic substances, they can also support native plants, crops and forests, capturing carbon as organic matter accumulates.

To test the hypothesis that Technosol construction mitigates CO2 emissions from open-cast mining, the researchers estimated carbon stocks in Brazilian mining sites using data available on SIGMINE, an online platform maintained by the National Mining Agency (ANM).

They found that recovery of soil organic stocks with Technosols is climate-dependent, with tropical Technosols showing the greatest potential carbon stock recovery owing to high input of plant-derived carbon and strong potential for carbon stabilization through mineral-organic interactions.

“One of our most important findings is the amount of carbon obtained in Technosols. In some cases, it exceeds the total in natural soils,” Osório Ferreira said. “The studies conducted by Francisco [Ruiz] show that it’s possible, in a very short time, to construct soils that perform even better than natural soils and help mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.”

The researchers stress that some types of mine waste contain potentially toxic elements such as arsenic, mercury, cadmium, copper, and lead and that precautions should be taken to avoid their use. Thus, prior to turning them into Tecnosoils, it is important to apply some remediation techniques such as phytoremediation or the use of plants and associated soil microbes to reduce the levels or toxic effects of contaminants, and soil amendment, which involves the addition of certain materials to improve the soil’s physical and chemical properties.