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The U.S. Department of Defense has just committed funding for two rare earth separation plants on U.S. soil.

It’s one small step towards the Trump administration’s stated goal of breaking the country’s dependence on Chinese supplies of critical minerals.

But the direct involvement of the Pentagon underlines the scale of the task associated with creating from scratch a non-Chinese rare earths supply chain.

The United States was almost totally dependent on imports of rare earth compounds and metals last year, just as it was the year before and the year before that. China remained the largest supplier to the tune of around 80% of all imports, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

That reliance on China for minerals with critical uses across a wide spectrum of civilian and military applications is becoming ever more problematic as Sino-U.S. relations deteriorate.

However, to break it, as the United States is finding out, requires a mix of direct government support, alliances with like-minded countries, and a long-term focus on the six-stage process chain from ore to rare earth magnet.

Read more at: https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-rareearths-ahome/column-u-s-finds-its-chinese-rare-earth-dependency-hard-to-break-idUKKCN24T20I

Elon Musk has a plea for mining companies: “Please mine more nickel.”

“Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way,” said Musk, chief executive officer of the electric-carmaker, during a second-quarter earnings call.

Musk’s plea comes as one of Japan’s general trading giants is about to take a roughly $500 million write down on a nickel project in Madagascar because of low prices and the coronavirus pandemic.

Supplies of battery-grade nickel — a key component in the cathode of an electric vehicle’s battery — could run short as early as 2023. BloombergNEF expects a tight balance in the next two to three years as lithium-ion battery demand picks up.

Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/musk-promises-giant-contract-for-efficiently-mined-nickel

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Nickel is just one metal still facing hurdles, despite the rebound in prices it saw in Q2. During the first half of 2020, mining and refining facilities for nickel were disrupted at a global scale, from the Philippines to Canada, as a result of coronavirus containment measures.

“We expect primary refined nickel supply to decline by a little more than 1 percent year-on-year in 2020 because of the disruptions,” Roskill Senior Analyst Jack Anderson told.

“By 2030, we forecast nickel demand from the batteries sector to account for a little over 25 percent of the total nickel market,” Anderson said. “These nickel-rich cathodes will also be joined by non-nickel-containing cathodes such as lithium iron phosphate, which is favored in the Chinese market for its lower cost and safety record in powering EVs.”

Despite the economic weakening due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Europe and China have strengthened their EV subsidy programs and maintained their CO2 and EV targets, which Roskill believes will continue to support EV adoption and therefore nickel demand from the battery space.

As the second half of the year begins, the world continues to be challenged by the uncertainty from COVID-19, with commodities being no exception.

“For nickel, we are waiting to see whether the Indonesian NPI producers are impacted by any outbreaks in the locations they operate,” Anderson said. “This is significant because it supplies NPI to Chinese stainless steel mills as well as integrated domestic operations.”

He also pointed to several battery-grade nickel intermediate projects under construction in Indonesia.

“The timely development of these projects to produce battery-grade nickel to feed the lithium-ion battery market could be under threat,” the expert said. “Roskill believes that battery-grade nickel intermediates are the pinch point in the EV battery supply chain.”

Read more at: https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/base-metals-investing/nickel-investing/roskill-partial-demand-recovery-support-nickel-prices-h2/

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