March 13th, 2024 - The Mine Wire

METALS MARKET

The big winner this past week was Palladium which is up 7.32%. It was a positive week for most metals. Copper hit a 5 week high due to better-than-expected trade data from China, while zinc continued upwards due to a cut in output from South Korea's Seokpo zinc smelter.

^{**For our chart above we are taking prices from Monday close to Tuesday close, so not the typical week of Monday through Friday.}

KEEPING AN EYE ON GOVERNMENT DECISIONS

With many forecasting significant demand for metals into the foreseeable future, governments are all over the place with their policies. Here are some of the notable moves this week. We saw a lot of news out of Canada, due to the large PDAC conference:

• 🇨🇦 🇦🇺 Canada & Australia will work together on critical minerals. The “like-minded” nations want to ensure that the development of their critical minerals is clean, and that their industries can compete fairly in the international market. Canada’s Minister of Energy & Natural Resources was clear last week about concerns around ESG standards in some countries as well as market manipulation and the need for an appropriate response like tariffs or other measures.

• 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 Canada and The United States have reached an understanding on next steps to further bilateral cooperation to reduce and mitigate the impacts of water pollution in the Elk-Kootenai/y watershed.

• 🇨🇦 A host of Canadian provinces came out with news around PDAC. Nova Scotia launched their critical minerals strategy. The Manitoba government announced that they are seeking feedback on their new critical minerals strategy. Saskatchewan announced that a Critical Minerals Processing Investment Incentive (CMPII) is coming in their budget. Meanwhile First Nations in British Columbia also announced a proactive critical minerals strategy for their territories in the province.

• 🇺🇸 The Oregon State legislature passed a bill to rid Oregon’s Public Employee Retirement System of coal investments. It now awaits the signature of Governor Tina Kotek.

• 🇺🇸 The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is now soliciting proposals for fiscal year 2024 cooperative agreements to collect data on mine waste. Information for this $5M funding opportunity is available here.

• 🇦🇺 🇻🇳 Australia and Vietnam are publicly strengthening their relations as they look to boost cooperation in a number of sectors including energy, minerals, agriculture, banking and finance. Vietnam is said to have the world's second-largest deposits of around 22 million tons of rare earths oxide (REO) equivalent.

• 🇮🇹 Italy’s Energy Minister told it’s parliament that it is committed to stopping electricity generation from coal by the end of 2025, except in the island of Sardinia.

• 🇷🇴 The Romanian government announced that it won a legal dispute against Canada’s Gabriel Resources (GBU.V) which was seeking $4.4 Billion in damages after the government withdrew its support of the project in 2014 due to country-wide protests.

• 🇵🇭 The Department of Finance for the Philippines wants to collect more income-based taxes and royalties from mining firms. The Chamber of Mines of The Philippines has said the move will make mining more uncompetitive.

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MINING MATTERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

• Franco Nevada Corporation (FNV) reported its 2023 earnings. The company ended the year with no debt and $1.4 billion in cash. Given their stake in the Cobre Panama mine, they recognized a full impairment loss of $1,169.2 million. Despite this, the dividend was raised for the 17th consecutive year.

• Sibanye Stillwater (SSWJ.J) reported a $2 billion loss for the year and had to cancel its final dividend. Slumping platinum prices along with other metals like Lithium and Nickel have put pressure on the miner and forced layoffs. Quite a turn for a company that turned $1.2 billion in profit a year earlier.

• Cat Lake First Nation has been granted an injunction pausing a gold-mining company's construction of a temporary winter road leading to an exploration camp for a proposed open-pit mine in northwestern Ontario.

• Quebec’s Environment Minister says an environmental review would have taken too long and they would have lost the opportunity to host a Northvolt EV battery plant. These comments come after it surfaced that thresholds may have been changed to circumvent a review.

• The London Metal Exchange rejected a bid by the Australian government to have the LME recognize “clean” nickel. The LME said the market for clean nickel is not large enough to support “vibrant” trading and any split could hurt liquidity. Tariff’s anyone?

• 🇨🇳 China is hungry for the coal. January/February coal imports were up a whopping 23% year on year. China's coal imports last year jumped 61.8% to a record of 474.42 million tons.

• Goldman Sachs said that the bear market for battery metals is far from over and gave a bearish outlook for nickel, lithium and cobalt. Western EV-demand downgrades coupled with oversupply are hurting prices of these commodities.

• Finally, some nice cover by Canada’s CBC of PDAC, the parties and how deals still get done over beers, despite being less intimate than the older days.

MINING BITS

• 🚀 Rolls-Royce is developing micro nuclear reactors in order to power rockets as well as mining equipment on Mars and the Moon.

• 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 Meanwhile, Russia talks about working with China to put a nuclear power plant on the moon by 2035 in order to help establish lunar settlements.

• ⛏️ One Ontario miner is taking a crack at raising money through cryptocurrency. Listen to the discussion here.

• 🏜️ A tech company in the U.A.E. is growing diamonds in the desert.

• 🇯🇵 Four of the world’s top five banks supporting coal expansion are Japanese and they are getting called out for it. Of course, these figures exclude China which is notable for expanding its own coal capacity.

• ⚛️ The US department of Energy posted “8 Things to Know About Converting Coal Plants to Nuclear Power”, clearly trying to convince potential communities to accept such a switch. We like nuclear and know its safe, but understand why some may have their reservations.

• 🏛️ A U.S. court has absolved five of America's biggest tech companies in a case over their alleged support of child labor in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The court found that these tech companies had a normal buyer/seller relationship with suppliers and were not liable.

• ☠️ A cinnamon recall in the United States widened this week over fears of elevated levels of lead in some batches of the spice.

• 💣 Two Ukrainian drones struck fuel facilities at one of Russia's largest iron ore plants. No one was injured and the plant was still operating normally.

• 🇷🇴 Did you know that Romania has the highest alcohol consumption globally? They average a whopping 17 liters of alcohol consumed annually per person aged 15 and above while the global average is 5.5.

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