A Blog for Browsing Mining, Mineral Processing, and Metals Info

German luxury vehicle maker BMW signed a US$2.3 billion long-term deal earlier this month with Swedish battery maker Northvolt, the latest of such deals, as European carmakers try to compete with Tesla in the burgeoning electric vehicle (EV) market.

Tesla’s gigafactories and battery technology have long given it an edge in the EV market (Northvolt was started by two former Tesla executives), but when it comes to the sourcing of raw material for lithium-ion batteries, the California company faces the same challenges as traditional carmakers.

This makes another, much smaller deal BMW struck more significant in finding an advantage over Tesla and stealing a march on its German and Japanese competitors.

The Munich-based carmaker signed a five-year cobalt supply deal on July 10 with Moroccan miner Managem worth US$112 million. Managem owns Bou-Azzer in the Anti Atlas mountains, the only primary cobalt mine in the world and in operation since 1930.

BMW says the offtake agreement, first announced a year ago, covers one-fifth of its requirements for the NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) cathodes in its batteries, which together with Tesla’s NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum) represents more than 90% of the market.

The other 80% of the cobalt it needs comes from the Murrin Murrin mine in Australia, a Glencore (LSE: GLEN) owned operation, which makes BMW the only carmaker with a direct to mine raw material sourcing approach.

Read more at: https://www.northernminer.com/news/cobalt-price-bmw-avoids-the-congo-conumdrum-for-now/1003819469/

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“Not only for the rare earth elements or the microelectronics that we all know so well,” she added, “but also for the advanced pharmaceutical ingredients that go into our drugs that obviously are important for the nation and also very, very important for DOD” – Ellen M. Lord.

“Not only for the rare earth elements or the microelectronics that we all know so well,” she added, “but also for the advanced pharmaceutical ingredients that go into our drugs that obviously are important for the nation and also very, very important for DOD,” she said.

“We could have implants in those electronics,” she said. “So all of a sudden … we have U.S. systems calling home to China. We also have the theft of intellectual property that is very well documented, where what we think we licensed for a specific use is all of a sudden repurposed into capability organic to China.”

Other factors with off-shore manufacturing involve workers themselves, Lord said. “Manufacturing know-how accumulates with the experience of actually producing something — and that’s lost in the U.S. if workers here aren’t doing the work,” she said. And when work is done overseas, she added, it means Americans aren’t doing the work stateside.

Read more at: https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2276540/covid-19-pandemic-reveals-supply-chain-vulnerability/

 

U.S. rare earths miner MP Materials will go public in a $1.47 billion deal by merging with a private-equity backed blank-check company, underscoring Wall Street’s rising interest in efforts to boost U.S. production of the strategic minerals.

The listing on the New York Stock Exchange would be the first for a U.S. rare earths company since Molycorp went public a decade ago. Molycorp filed for bankruptcy in 2015 and MP Materials bought California’s Mountain Pass mine and other Molycorp asset in 2017.

The deal, announced on Wednesday, comes as President Donald Trump and other U.S. politicians push to resume domestic production and processing of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used to build weapons and electronics.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/07/15/business/15reuters-mp-materials-ipo.html

Does nickel in Timmins have the glamour of gold?

There have been significant nickel finds in the rock formations around the famed northeastern Ontario mining camp but the production results always fell short of expectations.

Canada Nickel Company’s Crawford nickel-cobalt sulphide project could quickly be changing that narrative.

Read more at: https://www.sudbury.com/local-news/timmins-could-be-hosting-a-monster-nickel-deposit-2564167

Western Australia could soon become lithium-ion battery cathode manufacturer, according to a Department of Industry, Innovation and Science report.

Commissioned by the Future Batteries Industry Cooperative Research Centre (FBICRC), the report proposes that a cathode precursor plant can be constructed at the CSIRO’s Waterford facilities in Western Australia, which includes the use of  BHP Nickel West’s nickel sulphate pilot plant.

It is expected that the pilot plant will provide valuable information toward how to build industrial scale cathode precursor plants locally.

Western Australia produces nine out of 10 minerals that are needed for the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries, making the study vital to expanding the state’s economy as the world becomes more battery-focussed.

Read more at: https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/bhp-nickel-west-central-to-was-battery-manufacturing-mission/

KoBold Metals, a start-up backed by a coalition of billionaires led by Bill Gates, plans to scour for cobalt in Canada using advanced mapping technology and it’s targeting northern Quebec, just south of Glencore’s Raglan nickel mine.

The company, founded in 2018, has acquired rights to an area of about 1,000 square kilometres (386 sq. miles), where it plans to begin collecting geophysical data before the end of the year.

KoBold’s backers include big names such as Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The latter is financed by well-known billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson and Gates.

Read more at: https://www.mining.com/bill-gates-backed-firm-searching-for-cobalt-in-canada/?utm_source=Daily_Digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MNG-DIGESTS&utm_content=gates-bezosbacked-firm-searching-for-cobalt-in-canada

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Where Tesla goes, lithium will follow.

It’s obviously not as simple as that but there is an inevitability in demand for the metals used to make electric-powered vehicles following the success of EVs.

Interestingly, the connection between Tesla’s recent rocket-run on the stock market has not been replicated in the battery-metals sector, yet.

But as Tesla continues to prove that investors and car buyers are ready to embrace the shift from fossil fuels to electric power the current glut of metals such as lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite, will fade.

Read more at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/timtreadgold/2020/07/06/tesla-powers-up-lithium-and-other-battery-metals-will-follow/#2e54aaa82d58

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The pandemic has highlighted the fragility of automotive supply chains, especially for EV makers which rely on battery materials across the world. The initial outbreak in China forced the company to shut its Shanghai factory temporarily. But Tesla has fared well compared with other automakers with large footprints in Europe, which was mostly locked down for much of the second quarter of 2020.

Tesla recently signed a deal with Glencore to secure long-term supply of Cobalt. Most of Glencore’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has not seen any large mine shutdowns yet. There is a risk that the virus could spread in the country, which has limited infrastructure to prevent it.

Several mines which produce battery metals have closed during the pandemic. The Ambatovy nickel and cobalt project in Madagascar is expected to be shut until the end of the year, and Sumitomo’s nickel and cobalt mines in the Philippines were shut in May but have since reopened. Lithium projects in Chile have continued operations, but the number of virus cases in South America is rising rapidly.

Read more at: https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2120249-teslas-ev-production-falls-sharply-in-2q20

June 26 (Reuters) – Democratic Republic of Congo will begin its state-controlled buying of artisanal cobalt in about two months time, having been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, the mines minister said on Thursday.

In January, the government created the Entreprise Generale du Cobalt as a subsidiary of state mining company Gecamines to purchase and market all cobalt that is not mined industrially in an effort to exert greater influence over prices.

Congo dominates global production of cobalt, the metal used in batteries, and is expected to supply 70% of the world’s cobalt in 2020.

One fifth of the cobalt it produces is mined manually by subsistence, or “artisanal”, miners, making setting up a state monopoly a huge and complex task.

Read more at: https://www.reuters.com/article/congo-mining-cobalt/update-2-congo-aims-to-launch-state-cobalt-monopoly-in-two-months-mines-minister-says-idUSL8N2E26D0

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US electric automaker Tesla has earned record high sales of its models manufactured in China in May just five months after the company began producing units at the Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, according to reports.

Registrations for Tesla motors in China reached 11,364 in May, just a month after sluggish sales were reported due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, data from the China Automotive Information Network as quoted by Bloomberg revealed.

According to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA), Model 3 sales from units produced in Shanghai tripled to 11,095 vehicles in May and even surpassed local competitors in China, topping total sales.

Read more at: https://sputniknews.com/business/202006161079630448-tesla-sales-surge-150-percent-in-china-amid-german-ev-motor-rivalry-glencore-rare-earth-partnership/