Along with close relative rhodium, the two metals are chiefly used in the catalytic converters used to clean exhaust fumes by the auto sector, an area that accounts for some 40% of platinum demand, and 80% of palladium offtake.

Losing that demand will be significant for all three metals – and for palladium and rhodium, there is currently no other industry that can realistically replace the volumes that will be lost as consumers transition to electric vehicles, which don’t need autocatalysts.

Analysts see a long tail for PGMs use in traditional internal combustion engines, and a drop in supply as mining becomes less economic has kept prices relatively well supported. But with fellow precious metal gold at all-time highs this year, that’s a disappointing performance.

“The PGM sector is facing a shift in which palladium and rhodium will see declining demand with no major alternative demand sector on the forecast horizon,” Wilma Swarts, head of PGMs at consultancy Metals Focus, told Reuters.

Estimates of when the erosion of PGM demand from auto makers will become significant vary, and depend on views of future sales of pure internal combustion vehicles versus hybrid or electric vehicles.

According to analysts at Macquarie, demand for both platinum and palladium from the auto sector will start falling beyond 2025.

Earlier this decade palladium was a standout performer among precious metals, more than tripling in price between late 2018 and early 2022 to more than $3,000 an ounce. At just over $1,000 an ounce, it has now given up the price premium it had held to platinum since 2018.

Both palladium , down 9% so far this year after a 39% slump in 2023, and rhodium, a small, illiquid market which has clawed back a little ground this year after dropping almost two-thirds in 2023, have further to slide, according to analysts whose estimates cover the next five years.

But platinum , down 9% so far in 2024 after sliding 8% in 2023, may fare better. It is the only major metal in the group that is expected to rise by 2028 from last year’s level, helped by demand in non-auto industries such as jewellery.

Producers and analysts also hope the metal has potential to benefit from new demand from the hydrogen economy via fuel cell vehicles, a slower-growing competitor to battery electric technology in cars.

But hopes for an acceleration of demand from fuel cell vehicles appear to be built on shaky ground.

“The current pace of deployment of fuel cell vehicles is certainly disappointing,” said one person at a company involved with the technology.

In Macquarie’s base case scenario, total annual hydrogen-related demand will struggle to rise materially above 250,000 ounces of platinum by 2030. For comparison, the auto sector currently consumes 3.3 million ounces of platinum a year.

Analysts are more certain that the supply side will support platinum in the future through declining output from mines.

The World Platinum Investment Council, whose members are major Western producers, expects platinum to be in an average annual deficit of 500,000 ounces until 2028. Shortages will cut above-ground stocks to six weeks of demand by end-2028 from 23 weeks at end-2023.

Macquarie’s five-year outlook, which sees average 2028 palladium prices falling by 40% from 2023 levels to $800 per ounce, conversely expects platinum prices to rise to $1,250 an ounce by 2028, up 29% from 2023.

For South Africa’s platinum miners, that is cold comfort. According to consultancy Metals Focus, South African PGM miners currently get just 35% of their revenue from platinum.

Even at current prices, around half of South African mines are producing their PGMs at a loss, prompting them to rely on other products such as chrome. Mines in North America are under pressure too, according to Metals Focus.

“Palladium was over-valued compared to platinum in recent years,” said a major PGMs producer. “That was certainly very pleasant, but it’s over.”

(By Polina Devitt and Ashitha Shivaprasad; Editing by Veronica Brown and Jan Harvey)

Zimplats did not say how many of the 8,000 permanent and contract jobs were targeted under the planned cuts.

The company, which swung to a rare $8.8 million loss in the six months to December 2023, from a $159.6 million profit previously, said it was “critically reviewing its business” amid declining metal prices.

“Regrettably, labour optimisation initiatives must be implemented urgently to secure the business, and the bulk of jobs in the company,” Zimplats said in a statement.

Southern African PGM miners, including Zimplats’ parent company Impala, Sibanye Stillwater and Anglo American Platinum, have scrambled to cut costs and thousands of jobs after profits slumped as metal prices plunged over the past year due to weak auto production and concerns about a global economic slowdown.

Zimbabwe’s other PGM mines, Unki mine, owned by Anglo American Platinum, and Mimosa, a joint venture between Impala and Sibanye Stillwater, are also implementing job cuts.

Mimosa has also halted its $100 million North Hill expansion project, while Impala, which announced a 10-year $1.8 billion expansion project at Zimplats in 2021, is deferring long term schemes such as sulphur abatement and renewable energy.

Tharisa Plc has delayed by a year the commissioning of its $361 million Karo platinum mine in Zimbabwe, which was scheduled for June 2024, due to the low metal prices.

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Ros Russell)

The diversified miner said in a statement no injuries were reported from the Feb. 29 incident when an ore collector bin attached to the shaft headgear collapsed to ground, damaging a surface ore conveyor belt system.

The damage to the ore collector bin and collapse of the conveyor system had resulted in the suspension of production from the shaft, Sibanye said.

Investigations into the cause of the incident were underway, while its impact on annual production from the Siphumelele shaft is being assessed, it added.

The shaft was forecast to produce an average of 54,000 platinum group metal ounces in 2024, approximately 3.5% of Sibanye’s annual output from its South African PGM mines.

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Louise Heavens)

Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd.’s Zimbabwean unit is offering staff voluntary redundancy packages to cut costs because of anemic metal prices.

Weak platinum group metal prices are projected to last for the next 12 to 18 months, Zimplats Holdings Ltd. chief executive officer Alex Mhembere said in a staff circular dated March 18 that was confirmed by the company. The producer is beginning “a voluntary retrenchment exercise for all employees wishing to be considered,” which may “mitigate the need for a compulsory retrenchment,” the circular said.

Impala, known as Implats, and its PGM mining peers have already cut thousands of jobs in neighboring South Africa – which accounts for about 70% of global platinum output. The four largest producers have all recently released sobering earnings reports, with profits battered by a sharp slump in metals prices since the start of last year.

Employees at Zimplats – Zimbabwe’s biggest producer of PGMs – are being offered a minimum of three months’ pay and must submit their application forms by March 22, according to the circular.

“We have been working with all teams across the board in implementing various cost containment and cash preservation programs,” Mhembere said. “I am confident that as a team we will successfully navigate through the headwinds.”

(By Godfrey Marawanyika)

“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)

Coronavirus pandemic fallout and Moscow’s war in Ukraine have sent Western governments scrambling to reduce their reliance on Chinese supply chains and disentangle their economies from Russia.

But as Washington plots a course for its energy transition it is lagging behind China, which has spent the past decade securing access to minerals needed for the production of products like electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.

“We don’t want to be overly reliant on any one country or any one company for global supply chains for critical minerals,” Adeyemo told Reuters during a visit to a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa, owned by Sibanye-Stillwater.

While the US government has launched a raft of measures to incentivize increased production of strategic and critical minerals at home, notably under the Inflation Reduction Act, Adeyemo acknowledged that overseas resources were also vital.

“Africa is going to play a huge role,” he said. “A lot of critical minerals are located here.”

Chinese assets in Africa already include massive copper and cobalt projects in Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia as well as lithium in Zimbabwe, where companies are assisted by heavy Chinese state investment in accompanying infrastructure.

Adeyemo said the United States was working with G7 allies to close that infrastructure gap.

The US International Development Finance Corporation is, meanwhile, aiming to de-risk private investment in Africa. And the deputy secretary said Washington was incentivizing US manufacturing to boost demand for those minerals and create favourable market conditions for miners.

But he added that the White House also stood ready to ensure a level playing field.

“We are talking to our European allies … about some of the actions we can take using trade tools to make sure that a country like China can’t flood the market with things like electric vehicles and solar panels,” he said.

Hold accountable

Regarding Russia, Adeyemo said countries like South Africa also had a role to play.

In the wake of Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US government slapped sanctions on a number of Russian miners and mineral exports. But it left Russian platinum group metals (PGM) largely untouched.

The United States is a major consumer of palladium, a PGM used in catalytic converters, with 32% of its imports of the metal coming from Russia between 2019 and 2022, according to the US Geological Survey.

“South Africa has a real opportunity to help supply the global economy,” Adeyemo said. “And it gives us the ability to take other actions to hold Russia accountable.”

South Africa is a major palladium producer, and Sibanye-Stillwater mines the metal both in Marikana and at a US project in Montana.

“Between what comes out of South Africa and what’s produced in the US, the US does not need to be dependent on sources from any other country,” CEO Neal Froneman told Reuters.

However, he said companies like his needed US government support.

“You can provide loans or introduce tariffs or whatever it might be,” he said. “That is a role that they need to think very differently about and help companies that are trying to source and provide these critical metals into those ecosystems.”

(By Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Potter)

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.

African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) said on Friday it was deferring plans to expand output at its Bokoni mine due to low platinum group metal (PGM) prices after reporting a 43% drop in its half-year profit.

The diversified South African miner’s headline earnings declined to 2.96 billion rand ($158.5 million) in the six months to December 2023, from 5.17 billion rand previously, as lower thermal coal and PGM prices hit income.

ARM cut its interim dividend to 6 rand per share, from 14 rand per share previously.

The miner acquired the Bokoni mine in South Africa from Anglo American Platinum and Atlatsa Resources Corporation in 2022 as part of its plans to expand PGM output.

Bokoni mine, which had been put under care and maintenance by its previous owners in 2017, resumed production in November 2023, with plans to further expand output.

However, the sharp fall in PGM prices over the past year, mainly due to weaker demand in China and an uncertain global economic outlook, has forced South African miners, who account for 70% of world output, to suspend projects and cut costs.

ARM said a bankable feasibility study for the phased development of Bokoni, a key step towards securing funding, had been deferred “due to depressed commodity prices and uncertain immediate outlook”.

The company said the prices of palladium and rhodium fell 42% and 70%, respectively, during the period under review, resulting in a 40% decline in the average realized rand price for its set of PGMs.

ARM said its immediate priority is to conserve cash while ramping up production on a phased basis from the installed capacity of 60,000 metric tons of ore per month using existing infrastructure.

($1 = 18.6702 rand)

(By Nelson Banya; Editing by Jamie Freed, Eileen Soreng and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) inked a $500-million deal last month to supply Jiangxi Copper from the Kansanshi mine in Zambia as the Vancouver-based miner strives to shore up finances after authorities shut its Cobre Panama mine in the Central American country.

“There are active conversations going on about how best to approach some of those kinds of issues,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters in Toronto. “What you’re going to find increasingly moving forward is democratic countries around the world coming together to try to find pathways through which we actually are ensured of access of the minerals we’re going to need.”

The largest shareholder in First Quantum is Jiangxi Copper, but Wilkinson said the government won’t pursue investments that pre-date its critical minerals divestment strategy. It began in November 2022 by targeting three TSX-listed lithium companies. Ottawa hasn’t changed its stance on reviewing Chinese investments in Canadian critical mineral companies, he said, even as recent deals highlight continued interest from the mining and processing behemoth.

“We’ve been pretty clear that we are not interested in investment generally from state-owned enterprises,” Wilkinson said in reply to a question from The Northern Miner at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada annual conference in Toronto. “Certainly the ones that are raising significant flags would be those that actually require some kind of offtake agreements, those that require control – effectively controlling shareholders – or provide for significant board representation.”

Competing interests

The federal reviews must walk a line between competing interests. On one side are mining companies, especially at the junior level, who are facing what they believe is an unprecedented funding crunch from lack of stock markets investing in the industry and who turn to industrial power China for backing. On the other side is the rising trend of resource nationalism for security as countries in the West try to diminish China’s dominance in critical mineral mining and processing.

China’s Yintai said last month it would buy Osino Resources (TSXV: OSI; US-OTC: OSIIF) for C$368 million, Zijin Mining invested $97 million for 15% of Solaris Resources (TSX: SLS; US-OTC: SLSSF) in January and Vital Metals (ASX: VML) said in December that Shenghe Resources was buying stockpiles of rare earth elements mined at its Nechalacho project in the Northwest Territories.

Each of those deals might have some wiggle room under a review. Osino’s primary asset is the Twin Hills gold project in Namibia. Gold is not one of Canada’s 31 critical minerals. Solaris is digging for copper, a critical mineral, but 15% isn’t regarded as a controlling stake. Vital is an Australian company, so Ottawa doesn’t have direct recourse under Canada’s Investment Act, though it does have a say in permits for the project.

On Tuesday, Montreal-based SRG Mining (TSXV: SRG) said it’s cancelling a $12.5 million deal with China’s Carbon ONE New Energy Group to take a 19.4% stake in the graphite miner. It had said last week it would incorporate in Abu Dhabi while maintaining its Toronto listing.

“That was a helpful decision that they would essentially not re-domicile in order to accept Chinese investment,” Wilkinson said. “But certainly we will be looking at all transactions that involve Chinese state owned enterprises and those companies related to them.”

The nation’s platinum sector — which accounts for about 70% of global output — has been a key export industry and generates jobs for hundreds of thousands of people in a country with one of the world’s highest unemployment rates.

Over the past two weeks, the four biggest producers — Sibanye Stillwater Ltd., Anglo American Platinum Ltd., Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. and Northam Platinum Ltd. — have all released sobering earnings reports. Those results have helped us learn the following:

Jobs threat

The miners are trimming their workforces in South Africa – a politically sensitive move as the ruling African National Congress prepares for its sternest electoral test later this year.

Amplats, the platinum business of Anglo American Plc, has opened discussions with labor unions that may affect 3,700 jobs. Sibanye already cut 2,600 employees and contractors following similar consultations and Implats said it shed more than 1,000 jobs in the second half of last year.

Producers of platinum-group metals – used to curb emissions from gasoline and diesel vehicles – directly employed almost 182,000 people in 2023, according to the Minerals Council of South Africa.

Shrinking profits

Just two years ago, profits were at all-time highs as automaker demand pushed the price of rhodium and palladium – mined alongside platinum in South Africa – to record levels. Since the start of 2023, the price of palladium and rhodium has tumbled 44% and 63%, respectively, hit by inventory destocking and a subdued global economy.

While the decline of platinum has been more modest, the overall collapse in the PGMs has been devastating for miners’ bottom line: full-year profit at Amplats slumped 73%, while earnings at Implats and Northam for the six months through December plunged about 90%. Sibanye reported a $2 billion loss on Tuesday.

The shares of all four companies have lost more than half their value since the beginning of last year.

Cost cutting

The producers have reacted to what Northam chief executive officer Paul Dunne describes as the “worst crisis” in three decades by cutting costs and curbing spending.

Amplats is targeting savings of 5 billion rand ($261 million), while Implats plans to cut its expenditure by more than half a billion dollars over the next five years across its operations in Canada, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Sibanye and Implats are both hobbled by high-cost palladium assets in North America, where the firms have axed an expansion project and shortened the life of a mine.

The miners are bracing for a prolonged period of pain, with CEO Dunne expecting the “depressed pricing environment” to continue for as long as two years.

Output risks

By the end of 2023, as much as half of PGM production — excluding the Russian mines that are the world’s largest source of palladium — was unprofitable, according to estimates by Rene Hochreiter, an analyst at Noah Capital Markets in Johannesburg.

While that figure improves to about 15% when metals mined alongside the PGMs, such as chrome and copper, were factored in, the situation is set to deteriorate this year. Stripping out those byproducts, up to two-thirds of output will lose money, Hochreiter said.

While expansion projects have been set aside, the biggest platinum miners have yet to announce significant production cuts. They point out that the markets for the three main metals were all in deficit last year and retain confidence in the long-term prospects for their portfolios, despite the rise of electric vehicles.

However, that may change if the current squeeze continues, according to Heraeus Precious Metals. “If PGM prices do not recover, then shaft closures may become inevitable,” the Germany-based trader and refiner said last month.

(By William Clowes)

Read More: Platinum deficit in 2024 to be deeper than expected – WPIC

The 2024 deficit of 418,000 troy ounces will, however, be smaller than 2023’s 878,000 ounces due to lower demand, the WPIC, whose members are major Western platinum producers, said in a quarterly report on Wednesday.

It previously projected the 2024 shortage at 353,000 ounces.

Demand for platinum, used in catalytic converters to reduce harmful emissions from vehicle exhaust systems among other applications, is expected to fall by 6% to 7.507 million ounces this year due to weaker industrial demand after a record 2023.

Yet demand from the auto sector will increase by 1% due to continuing substitution of platinum for palladium , the WPIC, which uses data from consultancy Metals Focus, added.

Total supply, meanwhile, will dip 1% to 7.089 million ounces as a 3% decrease in mine supply – largely from South Africa and Russia – will be partly offset by a 7% recovery in recycling.

To cover the deficit, above-ground stocks will fall by 10%, after an 18% drop in 2023 to a four-year low of 3.581 million ounces, it added.

Platinum prices are down 11% so far this year after an 8% fall in 2023, which the WPIC believes to be a function of algorithmic trading and automakers managing elevated platinum inventories, accumulated during the pandemic and the semiconductor shortage in 2020-2022.

“Range-bound trading will likely continue until price breaks out of that range, but we estimate that the automaker inventory management process is close to having run its course,” WPIC chief executive Trevor Raymond said in the report.

Platinum supply/demand (‘000 oz)

(By Polina Devitt; Editing by Mark Potter)

The hit on Sibanye’s income comes as the company advances projects including a lithium mine in Finland and plans to develop another one in the US.

CEO Neal Froneman said Sibanye may consider a capital raise if the lower metal prices persist for longer, but he ruled out a rights issue.

“We are going to raise additional capital, but this perception that it’s going to be a rights issue is completely wrong,” he said during a results call.

The precious metals producer swung to the loss last year from a $1.2 billion profit the previous year and record earnings in 2021, when prices for rhodium and palladium rallied.

It reported impairments of $2.6 billion at its US palladium mines, a nickel operation in France and a gold mine in South Africa due in part to the significant decline in metal prices and an uncertain outlook.

The loss comes after Sibanye embarked on a deal spree, buying battery metal assets in France, Finland, Australia and the US.

The fall in prices for PGMs, mostly used by automakers to curb toxic emissions, is forcing South African mining companies to restructure and cut jobs.

Froneman said in a statement that more restructuring might be required, especially at Sibanye’s US PGM operations and the Sandouville nickel refinery in France.

“We recognize however that if low commodity prices persist, earnings are going to remain under pressure and, with ongoing inflationary cost pressure, there may be further restructuring required,” Froneman said.

Sibanye’s peers Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum are also restructuring loss-making operations and cutting costs, a process which will cost thousands of jobs.

(By Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Jason Neely, Jan Harvey and David Evans)

Northam Platinum’s CEO said on Friday that platinum mining companies in South Africa, the world’s top supplier of the metal, are facing “severe” market conditions and are caught up in the worst crisis in three decades as prices plummet.

“I personally believe it’s the worst crisis I have seen in three decades, on a relative basis,” said Paul Dunne, the CEO of Northam, South Africa’s fourth-largest producer of platinum-group metals.

“The squeeze on the industry is severe,” he told journalists.

South Africa’s biggest producers of the precious metals are halting spending worth billions of rand on output expansion projects and cutting jobs as they battle to keep a lid on costs as profits plunge due to lower metal prices.

Anglo American Platinum said it plans to cut 3,700 jobs, while rival Sibanye Stillwater has also laid off about 2,600 workers. Impala Platinum on Thursday said it may decide within six months to close loss-making shafts, if prices do not improve.

Northam isn’t cutting jobs at the moment, but the company is also holding back spending on projects, the CEO said.

Prices of platinum – mostly used by automakers to curb toxic emissions – have fallen. Producers cite weaker economic growth in China and destocking by manufacturers who built up stocks during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Platinum fell 0.4% to $872.75 an ounce on Friday while sister metal palladium edged up 0.3% to $944.68 an ounce.

“The current market conditions are severe and our primary view is we maybe in for a difficult time,” Dunne said. “We can’t see a sign in the market for a quick rebound yet.”

(By Felix Njini; Editing by Nellie Peyton, Jan Harvey and Chizu Nomiyama)

The Johannesburg-based producer of platinum group metals (PGMs) scrapped an interim dividend and postponed spending on various projects to save about 10 billion rand ($519.5 million) after its half-year profit slumped to 1.7 billion rand from 14.8 billion rand in the same period of 2022.

Impala said it was restructuring its Canadian palladium operations, the life of which has been shortened to between two and four years, down from seven years, and will postpone planned spending at various projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

About 3% of the company’s workforce of 69,936 has left through natural attrition since June last year and further job reductions could be considered if metal prices do not improve, Muller said.

Decisions to mothball loss-making operations could be made within the next six months, the CEO added.

If ongoing restructuring and cost cuts are not sufficient “you have no option but to consider either (placing mines on) care and maintenance or suspension of operations”, Muller said.

Prices of platinum – mostly used by automakers to curb toxic emissions – have fallen, with producers citing weaker economic growth in China and destocking by manufacturers who built up stocks during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Impala’s South African peer Anglo American Platinum plans to cut about 3,700 jobs and has also halted spending on projects after a 71% profit fall. Sibanye Stillwater, which has cut some jobs at its platinum mines, said its 2023 income could be down as much as 91%.

The price of palladium fell by 37% last year after surging to more than $3,400 an ounce following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rhodium, which soared to almost $30,000 an ounce in 2021, is trading around $4,000 an ounce.

Impala said most of the savings over the next five years would come from projects being postponed at its Zimplats and Mimosa mines in Zimbabwe and Marula and Styldrift operations in South Africa.

During previous cycles of lower prices, platinum mining CEOs have been slow to make decisions to cut spending and reduce output, Muller said.

“I don’t think that we’ve got the luxury of taking two years to make these decisions,” he added.

($1 = 19.2367 rand)

(By Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Kim Coghill and David Goodman)

Read More: In election year, South African mines bleed cash, jobs

Diamond drillhole EFO7D cut 34 metres grading 0.5 gram PGE including 10 metres at 1.2 grams PGE per tonne, 0.2% nickel and 891 parts per million copper from 388 metres down-hole, the company said on Monday. The PGE component includes 10 metres at 0.89 gram palladium, 0.19 gram platinum and 0.1 gram gold, it said.

“The key driver of this discovery is the implementation of artificial intelligence through our alliance partner Earth AI,” Legacy Minerals CEO and managing director Christopher Byrne said in a release. “This is the first confirmed discovery of magmatic-related nickel-copper sulphide mineralization in the 700 km long ultramafic belt that hosts the Fontenoy project.”

Explorers and miners are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to process big loads of data, streamline operations for increased productivity and spot opportunities to innovate and lower costs. Proponents predict AI will be indispensable to help the industry ramp up the supply of battery metals for the global energy transition to fight climate change. Electric vehicles, for example, need roughly four times as much copper as traditional automobiles.

Faster, cheaper

San Francisco-based Earth AI says it has made mineral deposit discoveries in two out of three tries compared with an industry average of 0.5%. Its predictive technology, trained on remote sensing, geophysical and exploration data, spots nickel, copper, zinc and vanadium prospects more than 100 times faster and cost-effectively than traditional methods, the company says.

“Our AI for mineral discovery is key to the diversification of the global critical metals supply chains by finding maiden deposits in unexplored areas at a fraction of the usual cost,” Earth AI CEO and founder Roman Teslyuk said in a release. “The discovery in Fontenoy, the second for us after the recent discovery of a greenfield molybdenum deposit, confirms that the future of mining lies in our technology.”

The Fontenoy discovery cost A$500,000 in exploration, Earth AI figures. That is 200 times less than the A$100 million spent by KoBold Metals. It’s a start-up also using AI backed by a coalition of billionaires including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, which is exploring in Zambia, Quebec and Australia, where it signed a deal with BHP (NYSE: BHP; LSE: BHP; ASX: BHP).

Shares in Legacy Minerals closed A$0.01 higher at A$0.14 apiece on Monday in Sydney, valuing the company at A$14.8 million. They’ve traded in a 52-week range of A$0.11 to A$0.21.

Massive sulphides

The Fontenoy project contains disseminated and veined copper-gold mineralization over a strike length of 8 km, Legacy says. It is interpreted to represent McPhillamys-style volcanogenic hosted massive sulphide mineralization.

A nickel-copper-PGE surface anomalism found south of the discovery intercept is now a priority area for follow up, Legacy said. There’s an opportunity to follow up with electrical geophysics for future drill targeting. Diamond drill planning is underway, it said.

Earth AI, which has an in-house drilling unit, completed three diamond-cored holes for a total 1,633.7 metres at the site about 150 km northwest of Canberra. Fontenoy was historically drilled by companies searching for shallow nickel-laterite deposits but not PGE or magmatic-related nickel-copper sulphide mineralization.

The AI explorer didn’t drill survey holes, but used predictive software to lower costs and speed the search process. It then sampled two-metre areas where sulphides had been logged and sent 283.8 metres for analysis, the company said.

“Mining with the help of AI has recently been at the top of the news, but it is precisely this discovery that is important for the market,” Earth AI said. “Previously, Earth AI discovered a greenfield molybdenum deposit in Australia in a region eight other companies explored and came up with nothing.”

The precious metals producer kicked off in October a restructuring process at its four loss-making mines that was expected to result in the loss of 4,095 jobs. 

Sibanye-Stillwater said the reduction in the number of layoffs was possible thanks to strategic decisions taken in consultation with interested parties. These include going ahead with the announced closure of the Simunye shaft, which ceased production in 2023, as well as keeping the 4 Belt (4B) shaft at Marikana open.

The miner said that the Marikana mine shaft, which employs 1,496 permanent workers and 54 contractors, will only stay in production if it does not run up net losses on a monthly basis.

Two other shafts, Rowland and Siphumelele, which were hit by operational and geological issues, “have been repositioned for sustainable levels of production at a lower cost structure”, Sibanye-Stillwater said.

The Johannesburg-based firm noted that almost 1,300 employees had voluntarily left their jobs or accepted early retirement packages, while 467 people left since September due to “natural attrition”.

The company said earlier this week that it expects to report a 91% loss for 2023 due to multiyear-lows for platinum-group metals prices. It also flagged an impairment of 47.5 billion rand ($2.58 billion). 

Palladium and platinum prices decline has driven producers in South Africa, including Sibanye-Stillwater to apply severe cost-cutting measures. 

Impala Platinum Holdings has offered voluntary job cuts, including at its deep-level Rustenburg complex, while Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) has announced plans to cut 3,700 jobs after its profit plunged 71% last year.

The miner announced a $1.6 billion impairment charge on its De Beers diamond business owing to faltering demand and a $500 million impairment on its Barro Alto nickel mine as prices are hit by slowing demand from the electric vehicle sector.

“We are now in a process of systematically going through all of our assets in a review just to assess their role in the portfolio, their success in the portfolio, and absolutely nothing is off the table,” CEO Duncan Wanblad told reporters.

The review is expected to take about a year, he said.

Anglo’s shares were up 3.3% by 1530 GMT.

The London-listed miner’s 2023 profit attributable to shareholders fell to $283 million from $4.5 billion a year earlier. The company declared a full-year dividend of $0.96 per share, down from $1.98.

Net debt swelled to $10.6 billion from $6.9 billion, slightly below the $10.93 billion expected by analysts.

Anglo, which also produces copper, platinum group metals (PGMs), iron ore and steelmaking coal, is not new to asset overhauls when commodity markets hit rock bottom. A decade ago, when its shares dived 75% on investor concerns over spiralling debt, the miner was poised to sell assets and cut jobs until the plans were abandoned thanks to a recovery in metal prices.

Both its South African unit Kumba Iron Ore and Anglo American Platinum this week announced plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs and review agreements with 780 contractors.

Portfolio burdens

Wanblad said “the two assets that are dragging the portfolio today are the PGMs and diamonds businesses,” adding that more action will be taken if platinum prices continue to decline.

Sales of rough diamonds at the company’s De Beers unit fell in 2023 as an economic slowdown curbed appetite for luxury items in major consumers China and the United States.

“Diamond inventories stand at around $2 billion, which is high by the standards of the past decade…It is higher than we want it to be,” De Beers CEO Al Cook told Reuters.

“What we’ll be doing over the course of the next year is… reducing purchases and production,” he said, adding that he expects a gradual pick-up in demand later in the year.

De Beers aims to reduce sustainable overheads by $100 million via job cuts and the sale of non-core parts of the business to improve cashflow.

It has already suspended the Chidliak project and Gahcho Kue underground project in Canada.

“We continue to think that the asset (De Beers) should be disposed – a sale to a luxury business could be sensible, but we remain sceptical as to whether this would be at the $7.6 billion carrying value that Anglo includes in its valuation,” Berenberg analysts said.

Anglo had already announced $1.8 billion of spending cuts by 2026 after logging a $1.7 billion writedown on its project to produce fertiliser nutrients in Britain. The company is in talks with potential partners over options including the sale of a stake in the project.

(By Clara Denina and Felix Njini; Editing by Miral Fahmy, David Goodman and Kirsten Donovan)

The London-listed company has taken some measures to protect its balance sheet due to weak commodity prices, including cutting jobs and capital expenditure forecast.

Following is a list of steps taken by the company:

Feb. 20 – Unit Kumba Iron Ore announced plans to cut about 490 jobs, following a reduction in production as it struggles to overcome South Africa’s persistent rail bottlenecks.

Feb. 19 – Unit Anglo American Platinum said it plans to cut thousands of jobs at its mines in South Africa, after profit plunged by 71% last year.

Feb. 5 – Anglo American’s CEO Duncan Wanblad said the company may consider deeper cost-cutting measures unless market conditions improve after a fall in prices for platinum-group metals and a cyclical downturn that is the worst in 35 years.

Dec. 8 – Anglo American said it aims to cut capital expenditure by $1.8 billion by 2026. Capital expenditure in 2024 would be around $5.7 billion, $800 million lower than previously expected.

Dec. 8 – Kumba Iron Ore said it was cutting production over the next three years to align output to constrained capacity to transport minerals via rail to port.

Oct. 24 – Anglo American lowered its 2023 production forecast for copper on curtailments at its Chilean operations, even as its output of the metal rose 42% in the third quarter.

Oct. 4 – Anglo American said it is cutting corporate office jobs across several countries, as unions said its South African iron ore business plans to lay off scores of workers at its head office.

July 27 – The company cut payouts to shareholders after lower commodity prices and higher costs hurt its first-half earnings.

May 31 – The company said it will consolidate its production businesses into two regions as the miner pursues growth in “future-enabling” minerals. Anglo American added that it would consolidate its production businesses into two regions – Americas, and Africa and Australia from July 2023.

(By Anchal Rana; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

The country’s biggest mining investors are halting plans to spend billions of rand on new projects in response to a slump in profits due to myriad local challenges and weakening prices of commodities such as platinum.

The layoffs and investment cuts come against a backdrop of high unemployment and weak economic growth that are looming large over the parliamentary vote, due in May and likely to see the governing African National Congress (ANC) lose its parliamentary majority for the first time in 30 years.

A rally in recent years in the price of commodities such as palladium, rhodium, coal and iron ore helped the likes of Anglo American Platinum, Sibanye Stillwater, Kumba Iron Ore, Exxaro Resources make windfall returns – allowing them to partly paper over domestic constraints including power cuts, a poor rail network and crime.

But with prices plummeting since last year, companies are in restructuring mode and cutting jobs.

“The challenge is now just to be able to operate, to be able to produce on a continuous basis,” said Claude Baissac, the CEO for Eunomix Research.

“Unless there is a fundamental change of policy and state capacity, we are going to end up with a marginal mining industry, providing marginal jobs.”

The mining sector’s contribution to South Africa’s gross domestic product stood at 6.2% last year from 7.3% in 2022 and 8.3% a decade earlier, according to Minerals Council South Africa, an industry lobby group. The sector employs about 477,000 people.

Loss making

Anglo American’s platinum and iron ore units in South Africa this week announced plans to cut more than 4,000 jobs and review agreements with a combined 780 contractors.

The restructuring, which includes postponing spending plans at some platinum shafts and closing a metals processing plant, aims to save Anglo 13 billion rand ($687 million).

Some 15 of South Africa’s biggest mining companies, including Amplats, Kumba and Glencore, contributed 110 billion rand in taxes and royalties in 2021, the bulk of about 360 billion rand in corporate tax collected by the treasury, according to RMB Morgan Stanley analysts.

The analysts forecast that amount halved in 2023.

Sibanye, which is South Africa’s top employer in the mining sector, plans to cut about 4,000 jobs at its platinum mines. Smaller platinum producers and some coal producers have also announced job cuts.

About half of the country’s platinum mines, some of which are the world’s deepest and costly to operate, are loss-making at current prices, said Impala Platinum spokesperson Johan Theron.

“That means if nothing changes (in terms of prices), more than 50% of the industry will disappear in some shape or form over time,” he said. “Nothing is sustainable that is fundamentally loss-making.” Impala has said it may cut jobs and last year asked workers to take voluntary exit packages.

Rail crisis

South Africa’s 2023 coal exports hit the lowest level since 1992 because of the dire state of its railway network, operated by state group Transnet and hampered by a lack of wagons and spare parts, cable thefts and inadequate maintenance. For a while companies stockpiled their commodities hoping the situation would improve, but more recently they have been scaling down production and cutting jobs to cushion losses.

Anglo American’s Kumba, Africa’s top iron ore miner, has cut mining output for the next three years until rail capacity improves, CEO Mpumi Zikalala said on Tuesday. Kumba had about 7 million tons of the steel-making ingredient stockpiled at its mines as of December.

“Clearly, for as long as there is no immediate solution to the electricity crisis, and rail and port infrastructure challenges, we will continue to lose jobs,” said the National Union of Mineworkers, one of South Africa’s biggest and most powerful trade unions which was once led by Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s current president.

($1 = 18.9349 rand)

(By Felix Njini and Nelson Banya; Editing by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, Silvia Aloisi and David Evans)

The company said it expects to report in March a loss per share for 2023 of 12.68 rand to 14.01 rand, compared with a profit of 6.51 rand a share the previous year. This is equivalent to an eye-popping 91% drop in annual profit.

The announcement comes only two months after the South African miner announced it would lay off 1,500 workers from its gold mines. It also said at the time it had begun talks that could affect 4,000 more employees at its platinum group metals (PGMs) operations, including those in the United States.

“We have already taken proactive steps to address loss-making production at unprofitable operations and the group remains focused on ensuring the sustainability of our business and delivering on our strategical essentials through this period of low commodity prices,” the company said in a statement.

Sibanye shares fell more than 5% in afternoon trading in Johannesburg, closing at ZAC 1,994. The stock has lost almost 48% of its value in the past year, mainly due to the prices decline of palladium and rhodium.

The sharp drop of PGMs prices decline has driven producers to apply severe cost-cutting measures. Anglo American Platinum said on Monday it would cut 3,700 jobs at its South African operations, or 17% of the Anglo American unit’s workforce. 

Impala Platinum Holdings has offered voluntary job cuts, including at its deep-level Rustenburg complex.

Despite the challenges, Sibanye noted that all its South African and Australian operations were profitable before the end of the fourth quarter of 2023. 

RELATED: In election year, South African mines bleed cash, jobs

The company said it was embarking on a restructuring that could affect about 3,700 jobs at its South African operations, or 17% of the Anglo American unit’s workforce, as it battles to keep a lid on costs after a slump in the price of platinum group metals (PGMs).

The miner is also reviewing agreements with 620 contractors or service providers to help save costs, it said.

South Africa’s PGM miners are resorting to cutting jobs and postponing planned investments as they battle to preserve margins after a sudden change in outlook following a rapid plunge in metal prices. Palladium declined by 37% last year after surging to more than $3,400 an ounce after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Rhodium, which soared to almost $30,000 an ounce in 2021, was trading at $4,365 an ounce on Monday.

The job losses come as platinum output has been gradually declining over the past decades with investors hesitating to invest in new mines as a growing battery electric vehicle sector clouds platinum metals’ demand prospects.

The restructuring decision “has not been taken lightly”, Amplats CEO Craig Miller said.

“It’s very much a last resort, not least as we recognise the unemployment challenges in South Africa and the socio-economic impact that the proposed restructuring may have on our people and the communities we are part of,” he said.

The Johannesburg-based producer’s profit slumped to 14 billion rand ($742 million) in the year ended Dec. 31 from 48.8 billion rand the previous year. Amplats slashed its dividend by 81% to 21.30 rand per share.

Amplats’ South African peers Sibanye Stillwater and Impala Platinum are also planning to cut staff.

The job losses could be avoided if Amplats sells its loss-making shafts, Livhuwani Mammburu, spokesperson for National Union of Mineworkers said.

“We are going to engage Amplats and see if this can be avoided as we can’t allow such a huge number of workers to be retrenched,” Mammburu told Reuters. “We have always told Amplats to sell its loss-making mines to interested investors to avoid job losses.”

Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad told Reuters earlier this month that the group was considering deeper cost-cutting measures if market conditions did not improve, after announcing in December sweeping cuts to save about $1.8 billion by 2026.

Amplats is postponing planned projects at its Amandelbult complex, where most of the affected jobs are, Miller said. He declined to say whether Amplats would consider selling Amandelbult.

The platinum miner is targeting a combined 10 billion rand in savings this year by reducing costs and postponing planned expansion projects.

Amplats would continue to focus on driving efficiencies and could consider additional “appropriate responses” if metals prices weaken further, it said.

It will also place its Mortimer smelter on care and maintenance from the middle of this year, saving about 3.5 billion rand over the next three years, Miller said.

($1 = 18.8727 rand)

(By Prerna Bedi, Nelson Banya and Felix Njini; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Mark Potter)

The partners aim to develop alternative markets for the battered-metal, as prices fell more than 40% last year due mainly to weak demand from China. The rout has rolled into 2024, with the palladium price falling below platinum’s last week for the first time since 2018.

The joint venture, which will be equally funded by both parties, says that while palladium demand has been dominated by auto catalysts for the past few decades, is time to find new applications for the metal.

“Over the longer term, demand for palladium in the automotive sector is expected to decrease, creating an opportunity to consider new applications for the metal (…) Palladium has a very high selectivity for hydrogen and thus can be used in a broad range of applications,” the companies said in the statement.

Palladium is mainly used by the auto industry, which makes up four-fifths of its demand. Consumption of the metal, however, dropped by almost 40% in 2023 as carmakers switched to cheaper platinum for the devices that reduce harmful emissions and as more drivers opted for EVs.

Sibanye and Heraeus expect to ultimately ensure a “sustainable PGM supply basket”, which should include palladium, platinum and critical raw materials, such as iridium, ruthenium and rhodium.

“We expect hybrids to become the dominant engine type underpinning demand for palladium in the medium term,” Sibanye-Stillwater chief executive, Neal Froneman said in the statement. “Longer term and in response to changing demands, the PGM industry must innovate and stabilize the platinum group metals market,” he said.

Palladium and platinum prices decline has driven producers in South Africa, including Sibanye-Stillwater to apply severe cost-cutting measures. 

The company is even axing jobs at its mines in the United States, with about 7,000 workers expected to be affected.

Fellow miner Impala Platinum Holdings has offered voluntary job cuts, including at its deep-level Rustenburg complex. Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) has also held talks with the government about potential job cuts.

The new MRE includes 813 million tonnes of indicated material grading 0.22% nickel, plus 0.07% copper, 0.02% cobalt, 0.048 g/t platinum, 0.094 g/t palladium and 0.012 g/t gold, for a nickel-equivalent (NiEq) grade of 0.29%. The contained nickel metal is nearly 3.9 billion lb.

There are also 896 million tonnes of inferred material grading 0.27% NiEq (0.21% nickel, 0.05% copper, 0.02% cobalt, 0.039 g/t platinum, 0.068 g/t palladium and 0.009 g/t gold), containing 4.2 billion lb. of nickel. The inferred resource grew 180% in tonnage compared to the deposit’s initial resource published in November 2023.

The 2024 resource estimate incorporated 35 historical drill holes, the data for which Alaska Energy purchased in August 2023, and eight diamond drill holes (totaling 4,138 metres) drilled by the company in 2023. The resource area covers three zones (EZ1, EZ2, EZ3) of sulphide mineralization spanning 4.5 kilometres of the Eureka deposit.

The highlight of recent drilling was the identification of a higher-grade core zone within EZ2 that displayed continuity along much of the strike of the deposit. This core zone alone contains an indicated resource of 211 million tonnes at 0.34% NiEq and an inferred resource of 154 million tonnes at 0.33% NiEq.

“In less than a year, we have taken an exploration concept to a substantial deposit of nickel and other critical metals,” Alaska Energy Metals CEO Gregory Beischer commented in a news release. “The update increases the nickel metal content of the deposit to over 8 billion lb. (more than 3.7 million tonnes) with only a 0.01% grade decrease and a notably lower strip ratio.”

The Eureka deposit of the Nikolai project now represents a globally significant accumulation of nickel and has now become one of the larger known nickel deposits in the country, Beischer noted. The project is located 40 km northwest of the village of Paxson, on the southern flank of the Alaska Range.

“Nikolai could potentially become an important source of nickel for the US, catering to the needs of various manufacturing sectors including stainless steel, electric vehicles, defense components, long-term, grid-scale renewable energy storage batteries and a myriad of other uses,” he said.

Regarding the high-grade core zone at EZ2, Beischer said the company will continue to evaluate this area as it could positively affect project economics.

The Nikolai project is a possible host to disseminated nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralization analogous to the Crawford deposit in Canada and the Norilsk mine in Russia, the company said.

Shares in Alaska Energy Metals jumped over 5% to C$0.29 apiece by 12:20 p.m. in Toronto, for a market capitalization of C$20 million. The stock traded between C$0.03 and C$0.50 over the past 52 weeks.

Kuvimba holds some of Zimbabwe’s best mining assets, which were once owned by a company controlled by US- and UK-sanctioned tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei, an adviser to Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa. The government has never given details of how they came to fall under its control other than to say they were acquired for an undisclosed amount.

Kuvimba was, in 2021, said by the government to be 65% state-owned with 35% of it being held by private investors, later described as a management consortium. Mutapa Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund, initially took over the 65% held by the government and has now bought the rest, said Simba Chinyemba, Kuvimba’s chief executive officer.

“The speculation was unhelpful and the fact that that speculation did not die out despite us presenting the evidence of the structure of Kuvimba” complicated its dealing, Chinyemba said in an interview in Cape Town on Thursday. “If there are questions about your shareholding then potential investors would want to think a little bit deeper about investing.”

Chinyemba said he was one of the beneficiaries of the buyout and that Tagwirei had never benefited from its operations, which include nickel and gold mines and lithium and platinum deposits. He wouldn’t disclose the amount paid for the 35% or when the transaction was completed, but said it was “very fresh.”

In 2021 Bloomberg reported on a trove of emails, documents and WhatsApp messages that delineated the links between Tagwirei and his company, Sotic International Ltd., and the Financial Times and The Sentry followed with reports giving details of the relationship later that year.

Kuvimba said at the time it planned to hold an initial public offering. Its assets include Darwendale, Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum deposit, that was previously partly owned by Russian investors.

Tagwirei, known in Zimbabwe as “Queen Bee” because of his political and economic influence, was sanctioned by the US in 2020 for alleged corruption and the UK followed suit in 2021.

(By Matthew Hill, William Clowes and Antony Sguazzin)

Spot palladium retreated 2.8% to $869.6 per troy ounce, its lowest in five years, while platinum stood at $874.5.

Palladium fell by 39% in 2023 after rising prices from 2018 to 2022 caused the auto sector, which accounts for 80% of demand, to start replacing it with the cheaper platinum in autocatalysts.

The rising adoption of electric vehicles, which do not require any off-gas treatment system, further worsened the metal’s prospects.

“That means that demand will shrink while supply will remain more or less stable,” said Henrik Marx, head of precious metals trading at Heraeus.

“Palladium prices could easily spike on major supply headlines given the thin liquidity. But we consider such rallies as opportunities for producers to add more hedging positions and for speculators to open fresh short positions, as the long-term outlook remains very negative,” Citi said in a recent research note.

The majority of mined palladium production comes in a basket with other metals, limiting producers’ ability to slow palladium output even when the market price is below their costs.

South Africa and Russia account for 80% of global palladium mined output, with the rest mined in North America. Russia’s main miner, Nornickel, will produce slightly less palladium this year, but no further reductions are planned, it said in January.

“South Africa and America are not going to shut down production. That’s the main conclusion,” a source at a major miner told Reuters.

Two South African producers already reported tumbling earnings following the collapse in prices.

Impala Platinum reported that its fiscal second-half profit likely fell by more than 85% and wrote down the value of assets in South Africa and Canada. Anglo American Platinum said its 2023 profit sank by as much as 79%.

Shares in the four companies that mine most PGM metals in South Africa all fell in Johannesburg trading. Amplats dropped 6.8%, Implats slid 1.9%, Northam Platinum declined 5.2% and Sibanye Stillwater was down 4.6% as of 10:43 a.m. local time Thursday.

(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)

In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the scientists say that the enhanced gold catalyst can withstand a greater range of physical environments compared to unprotected equivalent materials. This could increase their range of possible applications beyond the usual industrial and healthcare settings, as well as reduce energy consumption and costs in some instances.

The article explains that the reason gold appears so shiny and alluring is because it is chemically resilient to physical conditions that might otherwise tarnish other materials, for example, heat, pressure and oxidation.

Paradoxically, at nanoscopic scales, tiny particles of gold reverse this trend and become very reactive, so much so that for a long time now they have been essential to realize different kinds of catalysts, intermediary substances which accelerate or in some way enable a chemical reaction to take place.

“Gold is a wonderful metal and is rightly praised in society, and especially in science,” Kosuke Suzuki, co-author of the study from the University of Tokyo, said in a media statement. “It’s great for catalysts and can help us synthesize a range of things, including medicines. The reasons for this are that gold has a low affinity for absorbing molecules and is also highly selective about what it binds with, so it allows for very precise control of chemical synthesis processes. Gold catalysts often operate at lower temperatures and pressures compared to traditional catalysts, requiring less energy and reducing environmental impact.”

Gold can corrode

Suzuki pointed out that as good as gold is, it does have some drawbacks. It becomes more reactive when it’s in the form of tiny particles and there is a point at which a catalyst made with gold can begin to suffer negatively from heat, pressure, corrosion, oxidation and other conditions.

The researcher and his team thought they could improve upon this situation and devised a novel protective agent that could allow a gold catalyst to maintain its useful functions across a greater range of physical conditions.

“Current gold nanoparticles used in catalysts have some level of protection, thanks to agents such as dodecanethiols and organic polymers. But our new one is based on a cluster of metal oxides called polyoxometalates and it offers far superior results, especially in regard to oxidative stress,” Suzuki said.

“We are currently investigating the novel structures and applications of polyoxometalates. This time we applied the polyoxometalates to gold nanoparticles and ascertained the polyoxometalates improving the nanoparticles’ durability. The real challenge was applying a wide range of analytical techniques to test and verify all this.”

The team employed no less than six spectroscopic methods which vary in the kinds of information they reveal about a material and its behavior. But generally speaking, they work by casting some kind of light onto a substance and measuring how that light changes in some way with specialized sensors. Suzuki and his colleagues spent months running various tests and different configurations of their experimental material until they found what they were seeking.

“We’re not just driven by trying to improve some methods of chemical synthesis. Many applications of our enhanced gold nanoparticles could be used to benefit society,” Suzuki said. “Catalysts to break down pollution (many gasoline cars already have a familiar catalytic converter), less impactful pesticides, green chemistry for renewable energy, medical interventions, sensors for foodborne pathogens, the list goes on.”

“But we also want to go further. Our next steps will be to improve the range of physical conditions we can make gold nanoparticles more resilient to, and also see how we can add some durability to other useful catalytic metals like ruthenium, rhodium, rhenium and, of course, something people prize even more highly than gold: platinum.”

The Johannesburg-based precious metals producer is still looking for copper assets to buy across the African copperbelt, even as Sibanye and its South African rivals battle a profit-squeezing slump in palladium and rhodium prices, Froneman said.

A unit of United Arab Emirates’ International Holdings Company bought a 51% stake in Mopani, beating Sibanye and China’s Zijin Mining Group, which had also expressed interest.

“Copper still remains one of the best commodities to have exposure to so it remains a very important part of our portfolio,” Froneman told Reuters.

Sibanye, spun out of some of South Africa’s oldest gold mines in 2013, has become a diversified producer with platinum, nickel and lithium assets in Africa, Europe and the US.

“We continue to look for copper opportunities, but it’s not easy and the copper market has been overheated, but again it’s coming back slightly,” Froneman added.

Sibanye is trying to do deals in countries including Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is also pursuing a lithium project in Finland and plans to help build a new lithium mine in the US.

Plunging prices have already forced a restructuring at Sibanye’s palladium operations in Montana and at home.

The profit squeeze requires financial discipline in conducting deals, but is not a deterrent, Froneman said, adding: “Any good asset can be financed one way or another, and not necessarily with debt”.

South Africa’s Impala Platinum and Exxaro Resources are also hunting for copper, cobalt, lithium and nickel assets in Africa as global miners scramble for new sources of supply for minerals needed to move away from fossil fuels.

Froneman said Western governments may need to do more to help companies gain control of critical metal assets in Africa, as they are unable to compete financially with state-backed Chinese firms.

They also need to help meet Africa’s infrastructure requirements, helping to level the playing field for their companies to be competitive, Froneman said.

Chinese-state backed MMG Ltd last year agreed a $1.9 billion deal to buy Botswana’s Khoemacau copper mine.

“They have to realize that if they want to become a preferred partner in Africa, they have to do a lot of what the Chinese have done in terms of building infrastructure and assisting companies to be more competitive,” Froneman said.

(By Felix Njini; Editing by Veronica Brown and Alexander Smith)

South African PGM miners, home to around 70% of global mined platinum output, are discussing the need to restructure unprofitable production, the council said at the start of the Investing in African Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town.

The Minerals Council said the sector, largely dependent on automakers’ use of PGMs to curb exhaust emissions from engines, faces “a great deal of uncertainty” as the world pivots towards electric vehicles.

Top global PGM producer South Africa has some of the world’s oldest and deepest platinum mines, which are expensive to operate, especially when metal prices are low.

The prices of palladium and platinum fell by 40% and 15% last year, respectively, mainly because of weak demand in China.

Electricity and labour costs account for most of PGM miners’ total costs, the Minerals Council said in a statement.

“In light of this, various prominent PGM miners are restructuring their operations potentially impacting between 4,000 to 7,000 jobs,” it added.

Anglo American’s CEO Duncan Wanblad told delegates at the Indaba that margins for mining companies facing declining ore grades and sharply increased input costs “evaporate quickly”.

“What matters is the industry’s and government’s ability to navigate these challenges to ensure that the industry does survive and prosper – yes with smaller direct workforces, and this is a reality that the industry is contending with right now,” he said in a speech at the Cape Town conference.

Anglo’s South African PGM unit Anglo American Platinum (Amplats), which employs over 20,000 workers in South Africa, is reviewing costs.

Anglo American as a whole aims to cut capital expenditure by $1.8 billion by 2026, after reporting lower profits and returns for the first half of the financial year.

Sibanye Stillwater, South Africa’s biggest mining sector employer, has also said its planned restructuring could lead to the closure of four loss-making PGM shafts and the loss of 4,095 jobs.

Impala Platinum said it was offering voluntary job cuts to workers at its South African operations.

(By Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, Nellie Peyton, Nelson Banya and Clara Denina; Editing by Alexander Smith, Veronica Brown and Barbara Lewis)

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.

The move follows an exponential rise in the number of mining claims being staked over the past year on First Nations territories – some as high as 30% — the highest annual number of mining claims staked in Ontario over the last six years, according to the Chiefs of Ontario.

The Chiefs said the increase in claims led to an “insurmountable” administrative burden for First Nation communities responsible for reviewing and responding to the mining claims.

“In accordance with Resolution 23/30S, which was passed at the Fall Chiefs Assembly 2023, the Chiefs of Ontario are calling on the Government of Ontario to declare a territory-wide moratorium on the Mining Lands Administration System (MLAS) for 365 days,” Ontario Regional Chief Glen Hare said in the statement.

 “Mining claim-staking continues to grow at a pace that far outstrips the ability for First Nations to respond and directly impacts our inherent, treaty, and constitutionally protected rights.”

Hare said a 365-day moratorium will give First Nations communities the time required to assess the impacts of the MLAS, the effects of the mine claims currently being staked, and develop a process “whereby meaningful and fulsome engagement and consultation can be integrated into the MLAS processes.”

In 2022, the Anishinabek Nation were unsuccessful when they made a similar request. The Ministry of Mines declined, stating a moratorium on mining was not considered an appropriate way to resolve the concerns.

Under the current MLAS system, prospectors can stake a mining claim online, and are not required to engage or consult with First Nations – even if the area in which the claim is staked is within their territories.

As a result, Chiefs of Ontario said, the area of land that has been staked is automatically removed from Treaty and Crown land that First Nations may have otherwise had access to add to reserve land, convert into parks, or is land that is currently undergoing land settlements via claims negotiations.

This week, Wyloo Metals said it is looking ahead to development at its  Eagle’s Nest project in Ontario’s Ring of Fire, seen as highly prospective for nickel, copper, platinum and palladium, despite resistance to the project voiced by Indigenous leaders.

Gitxaala v. British Columbia

In April 2023, British Columbia’s Gitxaała Nation launched a legal challenge against the provincial government’s “free entry” mineral claim staking regime.

BC’s current Mineral Tenure Act also permits anyone with a free miner certificate to acquire mineral claims online through an automated system in First Nations’ territories, without their consultation or consent.

While critics challenge the system, the industry argues it violates prospectors’ intellectual property by giving notice that it expects to find mineralization in a given area before any security of tenure is granted.

A September 2023 Supreme Court decision declared that B.C.’s current online mineral claim system breaches the Crown’s duty to consult.

The court gave the province 18 months to design a new system that incorporates consultation — which the Chiefs of Ontario said sets an important precedent for First Nations in other provinces.

Straub talked about the Eagle’s Nest high-grade nickel-copper-platinum group metals (PGM) project 500 km east of Thunder Bay. He is confident that a sustainable operation can be developed. A blasthole open stoping, 3,000-t/d underground mine is planned with annual output of 3.3 million lb.  nickel, plus 1.3 million lb. copper, 70,000 oz. palladium and 22,000 oz. platinum.

Mine planning is underway for an updated feasibility study next year. During this time environmental studies and permitting activities are underway. The current timeline calls for construction to begin in 2027 and production by the end of 2030.

There is, however, resistance to the project voiced by Indigenous leaders. The province considers there are nine First Nations to be within the Ring of Fire. Two of them – Webequie and Marten Falls – have signed memorandums of understanding with Wyloo and are leading the environmental assessment on a proposed road to the Ring of Fire. When the road is complete, it should open the area to more prospecting and additional mineral discoveries.

Ten of the First Nations from Treaty 9 have gathered under the banner of the Land Defence Alliance. They oppose mining on their territories, wanting to protect their lands and waters.

Wyloo has set itself up to be the one of the world’s leading pure-play nickel producers outside of Russia. The company won a bidding war in 2021 for the Canadian junior Noront Resources, renaming it Ring of Fire. Then in 2023 it acquired Mincor Resources, an Australian company, and last September combined all the assets under the Wyloo Metals name.

The Wyloo portfolio includes mines at Kambalda in Western Australia, the Eagle’s Nest development in Ontario, and prospects in the Cape-Smith belt in Quebec.

Growing use of platinum in autocatalysts that reduce harmful emissions from internal combustion engines and rising sales of battery-powered electric vehicles was behind the 39% slump in palladium prices last year.

Around 620,000 ounces of palladium were replaced by platinum in 2023 vs 385,000 ounces in 2022, according to the World Platinum Investment Council’s (WPIC) November estimate. In 2024, the WPIC sees the substitution at 700,000 ounces.

“Based upon our current forecast of palladium moving to surplus from 2025, we expect palladium to begin to be substituted for platinum from that point,” said Edward Sterck, head of research at the WPIC.

Substitution of platinum for palladium or the other way round is a slow process. It mostly occurs on new vehicle models and typically only 15% of vehicles produced a year are new models, Sterck said.

Platinum and palladium are effectively interchangeable in gasoline autocatalysts, which account for 80% of total palladium demand. Consultancy Metals Focus estimates total palladium and platinum demand at 9.7 million ounces and 8.1 million ounces, respectively.

“We are already seeing substitution slowing down or in some cases stopping,” said Nikos Kavalis at Metals Focus, adding that the process would eventually reverse.

“It won’t be an overnight change, as autocatalyst designs can happen a long time before cars actually come off the production line.”

Palladium prices currently trade at a $50 an ounce premium to platinum prices compared with $700 a year ago.

The spread between them of less than 20% makes the research and development aimed at platinum for palladium substitution less attractive, said a source at a major platinum and palladium miner.

This eases the pressure on palladium but it is not enough to lift prices as accumulated stocks at fabricators and manufacturers are still large and fundamental long-term factors – the spread of EVs and recycling activity – are still present, he added.

Metals Focus estimates above-ground palladium stocks at 11.6 million ounces in 2023.

(By Brijesh Patel and Polina Devitt)

Pursuant to a subscription agreement entered Friday, Samsung intends to purchase $18.5 million worth of Canada Nickel’s common shares at C$1.57 per share. Upon closing, Samsung will own approximately 8.7% of the company’s outstanding share capital.

The battery maker will also be granted the right to purchase a 10% equity interest in the Crawford project for $100.5 million, exercisable upon a final construction decision. This would give Samsung the right to 10% of the nickel-cobalt production from the Crawford project over the life of mine, and the right to an additional 20% of production for 15 years, extendable by mutual agreement.

Shares of Canada Nickel Company gained 3.1% to C$1.63 apiece by 12:30 p.m. EDT in Toronto Friday on the Samsung investment. Its market capitalization rose to C$231.6 million ($172.7 million) accordingly.

Crawford is currently host to the world’s second-largest nickel resource, totalling 2.46 billion tonnes at 0.24% nickel for 13.3 billion lb. of contained nickel, according to a feasibility study issued in October, which pegged the project’s after-tax net present value (8% discount) at $2.6 billion and internal rate of return at 18.3%.

The proposed operation will consist of two open pits complemented by an on-site mill, to be completed in two phases to allow for throughput ramp-up, the study showed. Total capital cost for the two phases is estimated at $3.5 billion.

Over a 41-year project life, total metal production is calculated at 3.54 billion lb. of nickel, 52.9 million lb. of cobalt, 490,000 oz. of palladium and platinum, 58 million tonnes of iron, and 6.2 million lb. of chromium. First production is targeted for 2027.

Uniquely, the mine will be a net negative contributor to global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, thanks to its ability to geologically sequester 1.5 million tonnes of carbon per year. There will also be room to capture and store 30 million tonnes of carbon from third parties.

“As we advance the Crawford nickel sulphide project, it is critical to form long-term partnerships with companies that truly understand how crucial this production is for electric vehicle supply chains across North America and Europe,” Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby said in a news release.

“As one of the world’s leading electric vehicle battery manufacturers, Samsung SDI not only understands our vital role in these supply chains, but also believes in Canada Nickel’s vision for responsible, large-scale, net-zero carbon nickel production.”

Samsung is not the only new big investor in Canada Nickel and its Crawford project. Last week, Canada’s largest gold producer Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM; NYSE: AEM) invested C$23.1 million for a 12% stake in the nickel developer.

In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers explain that the chemical feedstock they worked on, propylene oxide, is an organic compound used in various applications, including manufacturing foams, plastics, and antifreeze, as well as for disinfection and sterilization. Traditionally, propylene oxide is produced by reacting propylene with either hypochlorous acid or hydrogen peroxide.

The problem is that when hypochlorous acid is used, there is a chloride byproduct that is usually discharged into the environment and this has led to fewer permits being granted to plants that use the hypochlorous acid process.

In response to this, some industries have shifted toward peroxide-based processes. The issue here is that when hydrogen peroxide is in contact with organic compounds, there is a looming hazard of explosions.

Given this state of affairs, the Caltech group decided to develop a safe method for propylene epoxide production that did not produce an environmental discharge or have a large carbon footprint. 

H2O to the rescue

The team began by looking for a catalyst capable of producing propylene epoxide using the oxygen atom found in a water molecule. The only side product would be hydrogen gas, which can be used as a fuel or in manufacturing other chemicals.

“The whole premise was that water is safe,” head researcher Karthish Manthiram said in a media statement. “It doesn’t present an intrinsic safety hazard, and there’s no environmentally harmful side product from the process. Instead, you’re making hydrogen, which is something that we need to be making more of in the future. That’s where we started.”

The group narrowed in on two catalysts: platinum oxide and palladium oxide. Both performed the reaction the team wanted, but not sufficiently well enough to be useful. Platinum oxide produced propylene epoxide at high rates, but messily, creating many unwanted side products. In contrast, palladium oxide produced propylene epoxide with fewer side products, but it did so rather slowly.

“Putting the two together actually ended up solving the problem,” Minju Chung, lead author of the paper, said. “Then we spent a lot of time understanding why that mixture works better. It’s not a straightforward explanation.”

Using X-ray absorption spectroscopy, the scientists determined that in a mixture of platinum oxide and palladium oxide, the platinum exists in a state that makes it a more efficient catalyst.

“It turns out that one of the most dramatic effects of going from platinum oxide to palladium–platinum oxide is that you can stabilize the platinum in a higher oxidation state,” Manthiram said.

“When in a higher oxidation state, the oxygen attached to the platinum is more deprived of electrons, making it more reactive with the electron-rich propylene. We see through a whole series of experiments that stabilizing platinum in a higher oxidation state leads to significantly improved rates and efficiencies of propylene epoxidation.”

Using the new catalyst, the rate of propylene oxide production is 10 times higher than what had previously been achieved, and the efficiency is increased by 13%.

Manthiram pointed out that future research will focus on testing the catalyst to see how it can be taken from a laboratory setup into industrial settings. That will require analyses that examine how long the catalyst lasts before it degrades and how well it performs at larger scales, as well as the development of a process for removing the propylene epoxide from the system as it is produced.

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.

Canada Nickel raised total proceeds of C$34.7 million in the entire unit offering.

Each unit consists of one flow-through share and 0.35 of one flow-through share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase an additional common share at a price of C$1.77 any time prior to Dec. 29, 2026, or the expiry date.

Agnico Eagle said it made the purchase for investment purposes.

Canada Nickel’s flagship project is the Crawford nickel sulphide deposit in Ontario, for which it released a feasibility study in October 2023. According top the new study, Crawford contains the world’s second largest nickel resources which total 2.46 billion tonnes at 0.24% nickel, containing 13.30 billion lb. of nickel.

Over an initial life of 41 years, the project will produce 3.54 billion lb. of nickel, 52.9 million lb. of cobalt, 490,000 oz. of palladium and platinum, 58 million tonnes of iron, and 6.2 million lb. of chromium.

The company said it will use its in-process tailings (IPT) method of carbonization to create an eco-friendly project. IPT involves injecting a concentrated source of CO₂ into tailings in the mill. The carbon is geologically sequestered in the tails while they are in the processing circuit, rather than after.

“The proceeds from this offering will help us continue to unlock the potential of our Timmins nickel district, which we believe has the potential to be one of the world’s largest nickel sulphide district,” Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby said in a news release.

“This potential, combined with our novel IPT carbonation process to capture and store CO₂, provides a foundation for a zero-carbon industrial cluster in northern Ontario.”