March 27th, 2024 - The Mine Wire

METALS MARKET

It was a down week for most commodities. The biggest winner was once again Cocoa which was up another 19.87% last week and is now up a whopping 231.56% on the year. Expect to pay a little more this year for that Easter chocolate!

^{**For our chart above we are taking prices from Monday 4pm EST to Tuesday 4pm EST, 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:

• 🇨🇦 The Ontario government came out with their budget on Wednesday and announced an additional $15 million over 3 years for its critical minerals innovation fund, which helps finance projects that will strengthen the province's mining sector.

• 🇺🇸 The Export-Import Bank of the United States offered a $600 million debt funding package to Australian Strategic Materials (ASM.AX) to support its Dubbo rare earths project.

• 🇺🇸 The U.S. Department of Energy is ready to start a negotiation for a funding award of up to $500 million for Century Aluminum Company (CENX) to build a new aluminum smelter.

• 🇺🇸 The US Energy Secretary encouraged Congress to ban uranium supplies from Russia. While the house passed legislation in December to ban such imports, a bill in the Senate has been held up by Republican Senator Ted Cruz on an unrelated matter.

• 🇺🇸 The Fertilizer Institute praised the U.S. Senate for introducing bipartisan legislation to include phosphate and potash on the final list of critical minerals of the Department of the Interior. The U.S. imports roughly 95% of its potash needs, the bulk of which come from Canada.

• 🇱🇻 Latvia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs called for further sanctions against Russia. The Minister suggested expanding the export and transit ban on raw materials used in the Russian military industry to include manganese ore and aluminum oxide.

• 🇮🇩 Indonesia revoked thousands of mining, plantation and forest-use permits this past week due to non-compliance or because they hadn’t be used. The government plans to redistribute the land to other companies.

• 🇫🇷 🇬🇫 French President Emmanuel Macron wants to regulate illegal mining in its territory of French Guiana. There are concerns about mercury being used to mine gold and then leaking into rivers, oceans and forests.

• 🇻🇳 Vietnam has doubled the amount of coal imports compared to a year ago. The Prime Minister has vowed that Vietnam will have no more power outages. Home to major manufacturers like Samsung, Foxconn and Canon, Vietnam had power generation issues last summer during a lengthy heatwave.

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MINING MATTERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD 🌎

• Rio Tinto (RIO) will invest $350 million into its Rincon Lithium plant in Argentina. The project was purchased from Rincon Mining in 2022 for $825 million and it is expected to be in production by years end.

• The London Metal Exchange (LME) plans to list Jeddah, a Saudi Arabian Red Sea port city, as a new delivery point for copper and zinc. A win for Saudi Arabia as it continues its move into the mining and metals market.

• 🇮🇳 The BBC takes a look at India which has two deep sea exploration licenses in the Indian Ocean and has applied to the UN-affiliated International Seabed Authority (ISA) for two more. There are currently 30 active licenses that have been granted, while there are two dozens countries asking for a halt or temporary pause on seabed mining - these include the UK, Germany, Brazil and Canada.

• Japan’s Isuzu will invest $6.6 billion in Thailand’s EV sector. Isuzu plans to produce its D-MAX electric pickup truck in the country for export in 2025.

• Australia has teamed up with the United States and Canada to launch an interactive map of deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals. The map is pretty cool and we suggest you check it out here.

• Taseko Mines Ltd. (TKO) entered into a deal to buy the remaining 12.5% stake in the Gibraltar mine in British Columbia, Canada from Dowa Metals & Mining Co Ltd and Furukawa Co Ltd. Taseko’s stock was up over 7% on the news.

• Zijin Mining Co., one of the world’s top 10 mining companies by both revenue and market cap, has warned that U.S. led efforts to “contain” China’s grip on metals could have an impact on their own growth.

• Chile’s SQM is in a public spat with China’s Tianqi Lithium Corp. The Chinese miner purchased 20% of SQM’s shares in 2018 for $4.1 Billion. So what is the issue? SQM is about to do a deal with state copper producer Codelco, but Tianqui is publicly questioning the deal due to “transparency”. However, SQM’s chairman believes the real reason is more nefarious. He believes Tianqui is trying to disrupt the deal so that it can bid on contracts in the same Lithium rich region.

MINING BITS

• 🪙 No, South American Gold Miner Nilam Resources Is Not Buying $1.70 Billion in Bitcoin. It looks like the news that came out is part of a pump and dump. The stock was trading at 0.016 USD on March 25th when the news broke and has shot up nearly 2,140% in a day to 0.37 USD on the misleading news. A number of publications pulled their articles while others commented on the need for stricter regulations of such stunts. It still closed at 0.27 USD end of trading, a surge of 1,500% on the day!

• 🎥 Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer, Peaky Blinders) will Star in the Mining Drama ‘Blood Runs Coal’. The movie is based on the 2020 book 2020 book Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America.

• 🇨🇦 Terry Lynch, CEO of Power Nickel and the face behind Save Canadian Mining, is calling to reform naked short selling and a new campaign to “Ban the Bots”.

• 🇽🇰 Reuters covers miners in Kosovo breaking the Ramadan fast 800 metres underground. Some very cool photos.

• ☀️ Adani Green Energy Limited (AGEL) is building the world’s largest green energy plant which just happens to be five times the size of Paris.

• 🔋 We always love to share the visual capitalist and this week they map out lithium in the United States. It looks like Nevada is the clear production winner for the time-being.

• 🇺🇸 The Wilson Centre takes a look at nuclear power and uranium mining and the importance of gaining support from indigenous communities early on. They suggest five key tenets that should be employed.

• ♻️ Some great coverage by Wired Magazine on the need to improve battery recycling globally. Mining companies clearly understand the importance of the recycling sector as we continue to see more and more investments by miners into recyclers.

• 🚀 SpaceX could soon have fully reusable rockets, bringing the total cost down by 10x. It could soon see the total cost of a launch around 10M, which would open up all kinds of possibilities for space, including asteroid mining.

• 💣 8 retired secret service agents gave a detailed description of Al Qaeda’s attempt to assassinate former President Bill Clinton in Manila, in November of 1996.

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