Behre Dolbear will be attending 121 Mining Investment in Cape Town, 3-4 February 2025.
Behre Dolbear will be attending Mining Indaba in Cape Town, 3-6 February 2025.
HEADLINES
Cameco resumes uranium production at Inkai JV in Kazakhstan
Greenland is getting a lot of international attention for its mineral resources – but what is hiding under the ice?
MP Materials produces rare earth metal in Texas
South Africa coal, metal exporters to spend billions on rail
Rare earth recycler Cyclic Materials receives $2m from Jaguar Land Rover investment arm
Saudi Arabia weighs global mining deals as sector consolidates
Cameco resumes uranium production at Inkai JV in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan produces 43% of the world’s uranium.
Cameco’s (TSX: CCO; NYSE: CCJ) Inkai joint venture project in Kazakhstan has resumed uranium production, Kazakhstan’s national uranium producer, Kazatomprom (LSE: KAP), announced on Monday.
Inkai LLP temporarily suspended production activities at Block No. 1 of the Inkai deposit on January 1 due to the absence of required approvals from state authorities. The delay was caused by the late submission of the necessary documentation.
According to Kazatomprom, Inkai LLP has resolved the approval issue and resumed mining operations. The potential impact of the suspension on JV Inkai’s 2025 production plans is currently being assessed.
“Kazatomprom remains fully committed to fulfilling contractual obligations to all existing customers and maintains sufficient inventory levels to comfortably manage deliveries throughout 2025,” the company stated in a note.
Kazatomprom does not anticipate any significant impact on its production forecast of 65–68.9 million tonnes of uranium oxide (U3O8), according to a previous note from BMO at the time of the suspension.
The in-situ recovery joint venture, in which Cameco holds a 40% stake and state-owned Kazatomprom holds 60%, is the largest uranium operation in the Central Asian country.
Greenland is getting a lot of international attention for its mineral resources – but what is hiding under the ice?
The allure of Earth's biggest island is undeniable. Over the past millennia, Greenland has captivated visitors, bringing everyone from Erik the Red, who founded the first European settlement over a thousand years ago, to the Allied Forces of World War Two to its isolated shores.
And, like the ever-warming climate, interest in Greenland is (again) heating up as the island has attracted the attention of US President Donald Trump.
Detailed mapping collaborations and explorations carried out over more than a century have uncovered evidence of important mineral resources in Greenland – including rare earth elements and critical minerals used for green energy technologies, as well as suspected fossil fuel reserves.
But – despite the unbridled excitement brewing around Greenland's treasure trove – the process of finding, extracting, and transporting minerals and fossil fuels is a multilayered, multinational, and multidecadal challenge.
On most maps, Greenland looks enormous, rivalling the size of Africa. Blame this exaggeration on the popular Mercator map projection, which stretches and enlarges countries near the poles, exaggerating their size. In reality, Greenland is around 2m sq km (770,000 square miles) – roughly the size of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Everywhere on Earth, the scars and signatures of immense stretches of time are recorded in geology. Spewing volcanic eruptions and slow-cooling magmas, giant continental collisions and taffy-like rips that eventually open up new oceans – all these geologic performances are written in the rocks. And an old land mass like Greenland contains detailed documentation of the Earth's history.
MP Materials’ Mountain Pass rare earths mine in southern California is the only rare earths producer in the United States.
MP Materials (NYSE: MP) has kicked off commercial production of neodymium-praseodymium metal at its Independence facility in Texas along with trial production of neodymium-iron-boron magnets, the company announced Wednesday.
The facility in Fort Worth will use feedstock from the company’s Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California to build the first fully integrated rare earth metal, alloy and magnet manufacturing facility in the US.
MP Materials expects to produce about 1,000 tonnes of finished neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) magnets a year and gradual production ramp-up will begin later this year. First deliveries of the automotive-grade, sintered magnets are on track for year-end and a significant amount will go to General Motors.
“This milestone marks a major step forward in restoring a fully integrated rare earth magnet supply chain in the United States,” James Litinsky, MP Materials’ founder, chairman and CEO, said in a release.
In midday trading in New York, shares of MP Materials were up 2.5% to $21.38, giving it a market cap of about $3.5 billion.
South Africa coal, metal exporters to spend billions on rail
South African coal and iron ore exporters aim to sign agreements with state-owned logistics company Transnet SOC Ltd. next month that could pave the way for them to spend billions of rand to help fix crucial rail lines and boost shipments.
Organizations representing firms including Glencore Plc and a unit of Anglo American Plc are negotiating the terms of the pacts with Transnet, said Ian Bird, head of transport and logistics for B4SA, a business group that’s partnering with the government to revive South Africa’s sub-standard transport and energy infrastructure and operations.
The collapse of freight-rail lines due to poor maintenance and theft of equipment saw coal exports plunge to a 30-year low of 48 million tons in 2023 while iron ore railings slumped to the lowest in a decade. While coal railings improved to 52.1 million tons last year, the first increase since 2017, that was well short of a 60-million-ton target. It also equated to just over half of total rail capacity of 91 million tons.
The government has agreed to allow private operators to run trains on the lines from about April to boost export income.
Rare earth recycler Cyclic Materials receives $2m from Jaguar Land Rover investment arm
Cyclic Materials, which aims to create a circular supply chain for rare earth elements (REEs), said on Thursday it has secured $2 million from InMotion Ventures, the investment arm of Jaguar Land Rover.
REEs are an essential component in permanent magnets, which are found in data centers, wind turbines, cell phones, electric vehicles, and used in military applications.
Less than 1% of REEs are currently recycled, while the global demand already exceeds supply and is projected to grow threefold by 2030, Cyclic Materials said.
The Ontario-based company said its proprietary MagCycle and REEPure technologies address this demand by recycling REEs from a wide range end-of-life products, establishing a circular supply chain for recycled mixed rare earths oxides.
“The investment highlights the surging importance of sustainable solutions in the automotive industry, Cyclic Materials CEO Ahmad Ghahreman said in a news release. “We are honored to have one of the UK’s most active corporate funds as partners as we deploy our rare earth recycling infrastructure across North America and Europe.”
The new investment lifts the company’s Series B round to $55 million. Cyclic Materials said it will use the funds to expand its operations across North America and Europe, enhance processing capabilities, and refine its recycling technologies.
This Series B extension builds on Cyclic Materials’ earlier $53 million round, backed by global industry leaders Microsoft, Hitachi, BMWi and specialized funds ArcTern and Fifth Wall.
Saudi Arabia weighs global mining deals as sector consolidates
Saudi Arabia is looking for mining deals in a push to secure supplies of critical minerals for its industrialization plan, just as a wave of attempted consolidation sweeps the sector.
Joining the consolidation drive “could be a good way of entering the market or getting at least access to different assets in a more structured way,” Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar Alkhorayef said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He didn’t elaborate whether this would be buying stakes in assets or buying companies outright.
Deals have been on Saudi Arabia’s radar for a while as it pushes through with an ambitious economic transformation plan. The overseas drive has had limited results so far with just one major completed deal and another in the works in Pakistan, but recent dealmaking efforts by major companies may give the Saudis an opportunity to deploy their cash.
Alkhorayef said Manara Minerals Investment Co., a Saudi firm backed by the sovereign wealth fund, could be interested in Barrick Gold Corp.’s stake in a Chilean Zaldivar copper mine. “Chile is a great mining country and the relations between Barrick and Manara are very good,” he said at the World Economic Forum.
Barrick is looking to sell its 50% holding in the Zaldivar mine in Chile, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week. Antofagasta Plc owns the remainder of the stake.
The mining industry has had a series of big-ticket deal attempts in the past year. Rio Tinto Group and Glencore Plc have held early stage talks about combining their businesses to create a giant to rival longstanding industry titan BHP Group. BHP too last year tried to buy Anglo American Plc in a $49 billion transaction — forcing Anglo to accelerate an overhaul of its business as part of its defense strategy — before eventually walking away empty handed.
