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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Mar 26, 2014 — Larry W. Reaugh, President and Chief Executive Officer of American Manganese Inc. , says that: “The recent (February 26, 2014) announcement by Tesla Motors of the imminent construction of a Lithium Ion Battery Gigafactory has raised the bar for electric vehicle production.” Initial production from the Gigafactory is scheduled for 2017, and full production scheduled for 2020. At full capacity, the facility would manufacture as many lithium ion batteries as the 2013 total world production.

Read more at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/american-manganese-inc-teslas-gigafactory-sparks-new-interest-for-secure-lithium-ion-battery-raw-material-sources-2014-03-26?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Major iron ore miners are stronger at noon after the iron ore price lifted to its highest point since posting its steepest one-day fall in four years a fortnight ago.

Read more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/miners-rally-as-iron-ore-lifts/story-e6frg90f-1226865276953

Tesla Motors  to build a $5-billion lithium-ion battery Gigafactory somewhere in the southwestern United States.

By 2020, the Gigafactory will have the capacity to produce 50 times the amount of batteries shipped in Tesla cars in 2013 – and 20 times the total amount of electric vehicles sold last year.

Graphite is a key component in lithium-ion batteries for cars, not to mention in electronic gadgets such as the iPhone. Each electric car contains about 110 pounds of graphite.

So demand for graphite is already high. But with the giant Gigafactory coming on line in 2017, it’s going to boost demand for graphite even more.

Read more at: http://www.trefis.com/stock/bldp/articles/231762/tesla-gigafactory-is-great-news-for-the-graphite-industry/2014-03-25

Only a week after Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) revealed it has been sitting on a world-class potash deposit in Canada’s Saskatchewan, its Russian-owned joint venture partner, North Atlantic Potash, has hinted they are ready to start building the project within three years.

The KP405 discovery, located close to where rival BHP Billiton is building its $3.8 billion Jansen mine, is said to have enough of the fertilizer ingredient to sustain a mine for decades.

Read more at: http://www.mining.com/rio-tinto-russians-to-begin-work-at-massive-canadian-potash-deposit-by-2017-38284/

QUEBEC – FedNav has launched a new icebreaker, MV Nunavik, to carry nickel concentrates from the Nunavik mine now under development in the Raglan area of northern Quebec. The project is a joint venture of privately owned Neactic Nickel Mines in Mississauga, ON, and Jien Canada Mining.

Read more at: http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/news/nickel-new-ice-breaker-launched-to-transport-concentrates-from-nunavik-mine/1002976485/?&er=NA

The Philippine finance minister said he will push mining companies to pay bigger shares of their revenue to the government even though the industry maintains that taxes are already too high and higher ones could kill the business.

Taxation of Philippine miners is a thorny issue that has delayed development of the country’s vast mineral resources. President Benigno Aquino, seeking to raise revenue from mining, has met stiff resistance.

Read more at: http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/24/us-asean-summit-philippines-mining-idINBREA2N0E620140324

Russian metal producers are looking to expand into Asian markets, in case the US and the EU impose sanctions on Russia.

The CEO of Norilsk Nickel, Vladimir Potanin said his company won’t rule out increasing supplies of nickel and palladium to China and Japan, Vedomosti reports. Other Russian metal producers such as Mechel and Metalloinvest say they could switch to Asian markets, while they didn’t specify the sales volumes.

Read more at: http://rt.com/business/russia-metal-redirect-asia-833/

The bank’s new Indonesian Economic Quarterly, pointedly titled Investment in Flux, appears as investment confidence, domestic and foreign, has got another lift from the confirmation of Jakarta governor Joko Widodo will contest, and most likely win, the 2014 presidential race.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/investors-return-to-indonesia-but-world-bank-warns-of-challenges/story-e6frg78x-1226862655538#