LME Week 2025 is the annual gathering of the global metals community in London and will take place from 13-17 October 2025.
Behre Dolbear will be attending the LME Week 2025, we are looking forward to seeing those attending. If you would like to meet us please send a message to enquiry@dolbear.com or Linkedin.
HEADLINES
Pentagon moves to build $1 billion critical minerals stockpile to counter China — report
South Africa state fund raises Sibanye stake above 20%
RANKED: Top 20 biggest copper mines 2025
Kazakh Fincraft targets Canadian Tethys in strategic mining push
Silver traders rush bars to London as historic squeeze rocks market
Turbulent markets fuel LME’s recovery from nickel crisis
Pentagon moves to build $1 billion critical minerals stockpile to counter China — report
The Pentagon has moved to acquire up to $1 billion worth of critical minerals as part of an accelerated stockpiling drive aimed at reducing US dependence on China, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing public filings from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA).
According to FT, the Trump administration directed the Defense Department to expand its national stockpile after Beijing tightened export controls on materials crucial to defence and high-tech industries. China dominates global supply chains for many of these metals, including those used in fighter jets, radar systems and smartphones.
“They’re definitely looking for more, and they’re doing it in a deliberate and expansive way,” one former US defence official told the newspaper. The $1 billion procurement marks a sharp acceleration from earlier stockpiling efforts, the report said.
Beijing last week announced sweeping new export restrictions on rare earths and related technologies, prompting US President Donald Trump to cancel a planned meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, and to pledge a 100% tariff on Chinese imports. “There is no way that China should be allowed to hold the world ‘captive’,” Trump said on his Truth Social account.
Within the US, these restrictions have fueled fears among those reliant on Chinese supply. Currently, China mines more than half of the world’s rare earths and controls over 90% of the minerals’ processing capacity, making it by far the most dominant player in the global supply chain. As such, a stockpile of these minerals would serve as a safeguard against potential supply disruptions, especially during geopolitically sensitive periods.
South Africa state fund raises Sibanye stake above 20%
Public Investment Corporation (PIC), South Africa’s state-owned asset management firm, has raised its shareholding in Sibanye-Stillwater (JSE: SSW, NYSE: SBSW) to above 20%, further cementing its states as the miner’s largest investor.
In a press release issued Friday, the Johannesburg-based mining group disclosed PIC’s purchase of an additional 2.35% of equity, bringing its total holding to 20.42%.
Established in 2013 through the spin-off of a Gold Fields subsidiary, Sibanye-Stillwater currently operates mines across five continents. In addition to precious metals, it also produces nickel, chrome, copper and cobalt.
PIC, which has over R3 trillion (approximately $165.62 billion) in assets under management as of September 2025, has invested heavily in South Africa’s resource sector and gradually built its stake in Sibanye, one of the nation’s largest by market capitalization. In the 2024/25 financial year, PIC’s precious metals and mining investment gained 42.5% as geopolitical tensions boosted safe-haven demand.
Last week, the firm unveiled plans to invest R1.35 billion in early stage mining companies. At least half of those investments would be in South Africa, with a focus on energy transition minerals such as copper and lithium, it said.
The copper price hit a new 16 month high in London this week, while BHP is predicting global copper demand to grow by at least a million tonnes a year, rising from the current 33 million tonnes annually to 50 million tonnes by 2050. US Geological Survey data signals supply must at lease double to avoid a severe crunch.
Amplifying the alarm, some of the world’s biggest mines are experiencing production setbacks. The shutdown of Grasberg could swing the copper market into a deficit this year, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs. Flooding at Kamoa-Kakula, another major producer, caused its operator Ivanhoe to revise down its guidance, while Teck Resources slashed its copper guidance over persistent setbacks at its Quebrada Blanca mine in Chile and Highland Valley Copper operation in Canada.
Tracking global production, we rank the world’s top 20 copper mines for the first half of 2025, measured in kilotonnes (kt).
Kazakh Fincraft targets Canadian Tethys in strategic mining push
Kazakhstan’s Fincraft Group is seeking to acquire Tethys Petroleum (CVE: TPL), a Toronto-listed oil and mining company, as part of a broader push to integrate upstream energy production into its expanding mining portfolio.
The move, announced in a non-binding letter of intent in September, also reflects Fincraft’s strategy to secure greater control over the Central Asian region’s critical resource infrastructure.
Fincraft, which trades on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange, operates significant assets in nickel through Kaznickel, as well as cobalt and coal via Shubarkol Premium. It has previously held controlling stakes in London-listed gold miner Petropavlovsk and Central Asia Metals, consolidating its position as one of the region’s most diversified mining groups.
Sources close to the deal say Fincraft sees in Tethys, which operates oil and gas fields across Kazakhstan, a rare opportunity to consolidate access to both mineral and energy assets within the same geography.
The group’s billionaire chairman, Kenges Rakishev, has long pursued cross-sector investments with a focus on scaling industrial ecosystems around core commodities.
A regular on the Forbes list of billionaires, Rakishev has previously launched ventures in blockchain, plant-based food production and tech start-ups, but in recent years has redirected his focus toward domestic industrial expansion, investing heavily in nickel extraction within Kazakhstan.
Through the proposed acquisition, Rakishev aims to integrate Tethys into Fincraft’s broader mining operations, securing access to energy reserves that could underpin future metals processing and export operations. The integration would also allow Fincraft to leverage Tethys’s existing oil and gas infrastructure to support logistics and industrial development across its mining network.
Silver traders rush bars to London as historic squeeze rocks market
The London silver market has been thrown into turmoil by a massive short squeeze, driving prices above $50 an ounce for only the second time in history and stirring memories of the billionaire Hunt brothers’ notorious attempt to corner the market in 1980.
Benchmark prices in London have soared to near-unprecedented levels over New York. Traders described a market where liquidity has almost entirely dried up, leaving anyone short spot silver struggling to source metal and forced to pay crippling borrowing costs to roll their positions to a later date.
And the squeeze has become so dramatic that some traders have rushed to book slots in the cargo holds of transatlantic flights for bulky silver bars — an expensive mode of transport typically reserved for more valuable gold — to profit off the massive premiums in London.
There’s no modern-day equivalent of the Hunt brothers trying to corner the market today, traders and analysts say, pointing instead to a combination of factors that have sent prices soaring. But the chaos of the past two days bears many similarities with the 1980 squeeze, and in some ways is even more extreme.
“I have seen nothing like it ever. What we are seeing in silver is entirely unprecedented,” said Anant Jatia, chief investment officer at Greenland Investment Management, a commodities hedge fund. “There is no liquidity available currently.”
For more than a century, London has been the heart of the precious metals markets, where global benchmark prices have been set by a small group of banks trading gold and silver bars held in one of a handful of vaults around the city. At the end of each day when positions are squared up, secure trucks shuttle between the vaults to deliver bullion to settle the trades.
The recent price surge has been driven in large part by a wave of investment into both gold and silver, spurred by fears of rising debt levels in the West and devaluation of currencies — a move that has accelerated amid the US government budget standoff and shutdown.
But the squeeze also reflects dynamics specific to silver, with market participants pointing to a sudden jump in demand from India in recent weeks, combined with a dwindling supply of available bars to trade and worries that the metal could be hit with US tariffs.
The silver market relies on the hundreds of millions of ounces of silver held in vaults in London to underpin liquidity. That stockpile has been steadily drained in recent years: first, by persistent deficits as mine production has failed to keep pace with demand from investors and industrial application such as solar panels; then, this year, by a rush to ship metal to the US amid fears of tariffs.
A rally in gold prices is lifting the wealth of Turkish households by billions of dollars, complicating the central bank’s efforts to rein in prices.
Turks’ stock of gold outside the financial system, often called “under mattress gold,” is worth half a trillion dollars, according to central bank estimates. Surging bullion prices have created a wealth effect – where consumers spend more because they feel better off — of more than $100 billion over the past year, Governor Fatih Karahan has said.
Gold reached a record high above $4,000 this week, before paring gains slightly on Friday. According to Is Portfoy calculations, another 10% increase in gold prices would create a wealth effect of about $50 billion.
“Such a large concentration of wealth in gold in Turkey means that the sharp rise in prices could generate positive wealth effects and boost domestic consumption,” wrote Capital Economics senior emerging markets economist Liam Peach. “Stronger demand-side pressures would add to the reasons to expect a slower pace of disinflation.”
Slowing inflation has been challenging for the central bank, mostly because of price increases in items like education and rent. In September, annual price gains accelerated unexpectedly to 33.3% from 33% in the prior month.
Karahan, addressing lawmakers this week, acknowledged that gold is supporting demand through the wealth effect. A study by the Turkish central bank in May found that soaring gold prices helped boost home and car sales in cities where households had prominent savings of the precious metal.
“Inflationary experiences of the past is why Turkey has a high stock of gold,” Karahan said.
The central bank is targeting year-end inflation of 24%, though it estimates that price growth will likely be around 25% to 29%, according to its outlook in August. Markets see price pressures remaining above 30% following September’s surprise acceleration.
Turbulent markets fuel LME’s recovery from nickel crisis
Crisis? What crisis? It’s hard to believe that just over three years ago the London Metal Exchange (LME) was teetering on the brink of a death spiral after its nickel contract blew up.
Yet as the global metals industry descends on London for the annual LME Week festivities starting on Monday, the 148-year-old exchange, owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, appears in robust good health.
Trading volumes are up, with nickel itself back to pre-crisis activity levels. New LME warehouses have opened for business in the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah and Hong Kong.
Even the exchange’s open-outcry trading ring continues to defy expectations of inevitable demise with US broker Clear Street joining the hallowed red-leather circle.
The tumultuous events of March 2022 still cast a long shadow in the form of the exchange’s ongoing reform program and tougher enforcement policies.
But the LME is being buoyed by turbulence in physical metal supply chains, not least this year’s special guest in London – Doctor Copper.
LME nickel futures and options average daily volumes
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) drew a line under the nickel crisis earlier this year with a hefty fine on the LME, reduced for co-operating with the UK regulator, and a detailed, at times scathing, analysis of what went wrong.
Were it a school report, it would have ended with the words “must do better”.
