Monthly Archives: January 2012

Nation urged to increase holdings of gold

Gold displayed at a shop in Shanghai. As of December, China ranked sixth worldwide in gold holdings, with about 1,054 tons, says a report released by the World Gold Council. Provided to China Daily

BEIJING - China should further diversify its foreign-exchange portfolio and make more gold purchases when the metal’s price dips but is still at a relatively high level, a senior central bank official said on Monday.

“The Chinese government should not only be cautious of the imported risk caused by rising global inflation, but also further optimize its foreign-exchange portfolio and purchase gold assets when the gold price shows a favorable fluctuation,” said Zhang Jianhua, director of the research bureau affiliated with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC).

He made the remarks in an article in the Beijing-based Financial News, a newspaper run by the PBOC.

The spot gold price declined 16 percent over the past three months to less than $1,600 an ounce last week. It touched a record of more than $1,900 in early September.

Zhang said bleak economic conditions, increasing international liquidity as countries turned to monetary easing and the resulting high inflation had dampened investors’ confidence. He said that gold had become the only “safe haven” for risk-averse investors. “No asset is safe now. The only choice to hedge risks is to hold hard currency - gold.”

Zhang didn’t specify what proportion of China’s $3.2 trillion foreign reserves should be held in gold.

China is the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities, having invested about one-third of its foreign reserves in those bonds. About 20 percent has been invested in euro-denominated assets.

As of this month, China ranked sixth worldwide in gold holdings, with about 1,054 tons. The value accounted for about 1.8 percent of the country’s total foreign reserves, according to a report released by the World Gold Council (WGC).

The US topped the list by holding more than 8,133 tons of the metal, 76.6 percent of its foreign reserves by value, while Germany ranked second by holding 3,396 tons, 73.7 percent of its reserves.

In 2011, countries including Russia, Thailand, South Korea, Bolivia, Colombia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela purchased the metal to increase gold holdings of their central banks’ reserves.

China didn’t sell or buy gold from 2010 to 2011, according to WGC statistics.

“The PBOC may have realized that its euro-denominated assets are in greater danger than it expected and started to eye gold,” said Li Jie, director of the foreign-reserves research center at the Central University of Finance and Economics.

“But it’s impractical for China to put its foreign reserves into commodities, including gold, because all these markets are too small for such a big hoard.

“For example, China’s purchasing gold would push up the price of the metal and increase its own cost,” said Li.

Li added that there was no easy way for China to get as much gold as it wished because major economies such as the US hold the majority of gold and market supplies are very limited.

China produced 31.75 tons of gold in October, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Monday. Gold production gained 5 percent in the first 10 months of this year to 290.752 tons.

Driven by increasing demand from risk-averse investors, the international price of gold repeatedly reached new highs in 2011.

Central banks made their biggest gold purchases for a single year in 2011 since the Bretton Woods system dissolved in 1973 and major currencies began to float against each other without being pegged to gold. China has vowed to further diversify the nation’s foreign-reserve portfolio amid growing global financial uncertainty. In October, it cut holdings of US Treasury securities by $14.2 billion to $1.13 trillion, the lowest level this year.

Media reports have said that the PBOC plans to create a fund worth $300 billion to invest the country’s foreign reserves in the US and European markets. The fund will reportedly seek to invest in real assets and company shares, rather than government securities.

By Wang Xiaotian
Source: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/usa/business/2011-12/27/content_14332943.htm

2012: The Recognition of The Age of Critical Technology Materials

The following essay was written over New Year’s weekend, 2011-12. My theme is that the rare earths supply frenzy has exposed an irreversible shift in the demand/supply picture for all technology materials, not just the metals, but also the energy minerals, and the minerals necessary for agriculture. The only mining ventures today that have the potential to be profitable on a stand-alone basis are those that can produce at the lowest cost in the global marketplace and the breakeven point of which is low enough to so they can maintain production at very low levels thus holding on to their customers.

America’s technology materials mining industry can prosper now only by vertically integrating to supply the domestic market first. Surplus production can be exported from several points of a total supply chain thus reinforcing capacity flexibility and dropping the breakeven point for the whole supply chain. This is smart globalization. Just as an aircraft flight attendant tells you to connect your oxygen first before trying to help anyone else I am telling you to build total supply chains for technology materials domestically to ensure that you can help yourself before you try to help others.

Note that by “American” I mean North American. The North American market for producing end use technology materials is 90% in the USA, but the production of those materials and at least half of the requisite supply chains can be constructed in Canada. There has never been a better opportunity to make NAFTA into the basis for a world class technology materials production economy.All that is really needed now is insightful finance and much better educated legislators driven by something other than re-election and greed. Call me a cynic, but Happy New Year.

The unprecedented and unexpected growth in total demand for technology materials for the production of fabricated goods, energy, and food since the beginning of the 21st century has changed the dynamic of the global materials market.

The response of American and European style capitalism to this sudden rush of demand has until now been to treat it as a problem to be resolved along traditional lines by raising the prices of the affected “commodities” until the “opportunity for profit” thus created resulted in additional supplies to relieve, or at least, to limit, the upward price pressure. “Demand will create supply” and “shortages will be ameliorated by surpluses” were among the responses I heard from American and European industrial procurement and planning managers. I was among those who then raised the “security of supply” issue only to be told that it was a non-issue due to the fact that the amounts of all materials in the earth’s crust made the potential supply infinite.

It was impossible at first, and it is not much easier now, to explain to industrialists and financiers that only resources the mineral deposits of which are concentrated enough to be recovered and purified by known and economical technologies can be called even potential supplies. The greed, short-sightedness, and poor general science education of our current politicians, industrialists, and financiers has let America and Europe sit back and not only observe but actually assist our economic competitors to gain such an advantage over us through focused acquisition and management of natural resources that the USA and Europe, in order to survive economically, must now restructure our financial as well as our remaining industrial assets in the hope of salvaging some competitive advantage through maintaining a lead in technological innovation.

Yet like the Mahdi’s soldiers who wore talismans to ward off bullets our financial, industrial, and political elites raise the banner of an outmoded form of independent operator capitalism to ward off the advances of a differently structured and focused Asian capitalism wedded directly to the finances and centralized direction of an immense nation able to drown the individual western capitalists in a tsunami of money not for the sole purpose of acquiring more money but mainly to acquire ownership and control of critical natural resources so as to make their home nation(s) self-sufficient in natural resources and energy.

The western capitalists serve the purpose of the eastern capitalists by choosing to concentrate on short term gains while the Chinese, for example, acquire resources for their use to create products and jobs not for speculation.

The problem of course arises from the fact that this growing demand for natural resources has not been created by the USA, Europe, or Japan, but almost solely, at this point, by a new player on the world trading stage, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).

I believe that 2012 may finally see a recognition by western strategic investors that the long term outlook for the global demand for technology materials is one of continued high net growth and that the present rate of supply of these materials already is at the point where it cannot even now keep pace.

Junior miners, which are basically exploration companies, playing the same old game of appearing to be on the cusp of “rushes” are really just bit players in the new world of natural resource supply. The economic cycles and turmoil in the old capitalist societies of the west and of Japan have taken precedence in the news over the dramatic growth of overall demand for technology materials, but the focus on short term gain from trading junior mining shares in a casino atmosphere is no longer viable when looking at ensuring the security of supply of technology materials.

Ownership of ore bodies and other such natural resources are only of long term value when they are developed to the stage where they contribute directly to Increases in the rate of production of technology materials. This requires years of planning and continual development. This cannot be achieved just by issuing shares to raise capital. The share market for technology materials’ producers is rapidly becoming a sideshow. China seems today to be the only nation-state with both an existing industrial policy and the capital and command organization to carry it out. Like the Soviet Union before it the PRC plans its economy in five-year tranches. Also, like the Soviet Union before it the PRC sets higher production targets for goods and services with each successive five-year “plan.” But the PRC also measures the success of a five year plan by the increase in employment and improvement in the standard of living it brings about. The Soviet Union pretended that it was always at full employment. The planners of the PRC do not seem to follow this tradition.

The key to future wealth is the ownership and control of total supply chains for the production of technology materials. There are no short cuts.

In the western markets tumbling share prices and suspension of IPOs on news of temporary declines in demand or temporary oversupply are simply casino gambling, and if that is the best that the so-called free market can do then China will be the clear long term winner in the technology materials’ self-sufficiency stakes. In order to be a competitive economy it is necessary for a nation to have access to the natural resources it needs so that its economy can grow. The development of such resources can no longer be left to short term planning. It is necessary to commit both capital and intellectual capital to the long term development of adequate and sustainable production rates of natural resources. Base lines must be established for nations and the development of the resources necessary to maintain those baselines and allow for growth must be a priority of the nation’s markets.

This didn’t come about overnight. This situation has been building since the making of money for the sake of having more money eclipsed the making of money from increasing productive commerce

The economic cause of the transfer the world’s trading and manufacturing center from America to China has been American capitalism, which seeks the lowest cost for all resources, goods, and services in a system of as much global free trade as is compatible with minimizing national and international taxation, i.e. maximizing profit. American style free market capitalism does not believe in natural resource exhaustion except as a scare tactic to drive share or commodity prices. In fact it is the maximization of the rates of production of natural resources that is the problem from the point of view of the long term allocation of capital for most, non-energy, extractive industries.

Increasing the rate of production of extractive resources is capital intensive and time consuming, which means, of course, that it must be a low profit endeavor when ranked against speculation.

Twenty-five years ago when the transfer of labor intensive repetitive operations to low labor cost countries was begun in earnest the main driver for American industrialists was cost control as a method for the retention of market share in a very competitive market place then just beginning to feel downward price pressure from Asian, predominantly Japanese, imports. A second, no less important, driver at the time was the maintenance of the industrial company’s share price. This was in the era of blue-chip stocks, which were defined as those of the largest producers of raw materials, energy, or finished goods in an era when banks were service industries. Money was to be made through profit margins on goods and services. Banks were providers of the service of lending money to blue chips mainly for cash flow or working capital purposes. Investment “banks” took new ventures public and the partners in those banks had their own money at risk first of all.

The until now unnoticed political driver that allowed the transfer of low cost manufacturing to China, in particular, was the desire of the ruling communist party of the People’s Republic of China to use the situation (the desire of the capitalists for low cost labor) to literally force-start and then accelerate China’s development into a modern military-technological-industrial state. As Deng Xiaoping had put it succinctly the idea was to make China “strong and rich.” A version of capitalism was to be allowed albeit one with Chinese characteristics so that the nation could be put onto a path that would lead it to being able to provide its average citizen with the safety, health, and material well-being already achieved by the nations of the west of which the paragon is the USA. Of course this would come after or at the same time as China grew in strength to “resume” its natural place among nations.

On Friday, December 30, 2011 the Chinese government announced that China would put men on permanent duty in an orbital space station before 2020. Such an announcement in 2000 would have been considered “crackpot” at best. What a difference a decade of GDP growth at 10% per annum makes!

I have thought, and I have been trying to point out for many years now that apocalyptic theories of supply shortages and of subsequent rampant price inflation supposedly due to peak natural resources, i.e., the exhaustion of natural resources, are based on the type of reasoning that confuses the disease with the symptom. The disease is the financialization of capital, which means that the majority of investments made in the west today are completely detached from any relation to the production of commerce at all. Money is being used primarily for pure speculation. The purpose of such types of investments is solely to make more money. The confusion between wealth creation (jobs, goods, and services )for productive purposes and the simple making of money, for no other reason than to make more money, by the press, the politicians, and the ordinary citizen has masked this societally suicidal frenzy until it has now resulted in the downgrade of the American standard of living for the vast majority, and the placing on the path to extinction not only the contemporary middle-class but also the pathways to entering and remaining in that class.

The American governing classes have purposefully joined the financial elites and insulated themselves from this downgrade, which has now moved beyond their understanding. They have assigned the solution of the financialization crisis to those whose lack of interest in the well being of the nation is manifest, the bankers, who in fact brought on the American abandonment of wealth creation for productive purposes as a status game enshrined in the corrupted phrase, “Him who has the gold makes the rules.”

American industry literally taught the world how to build and equip workshops to economically mass produce consumer goods. The industry was financed by a capitalism, which counted success as the marketing of mass produced products made at the lowest cost that could be sold at a profit.

America’industrialists never worked under a national industrial policy, so that when the opportunity arose to lower costs simply by exchanging the American for a lower cost labor workforce there was no ethical barrier. The short term goal of maximizing profit was paramount. No one was concerned with the long term consequences of such a move to the workforce much less to the country as a whole.

Keep in mind that financiers backed the moving of millions of jobs to low cost labor countries while politicians never even gave a thought to the effect on the economy of the ensuing unemployed masses. As I recall we were told that “service” jobs here would replace those lost to low labor cost countries. It was never clear exactly what the economic pundits were defining as service jobs. We now realize that was because they didn’t know what they would be either.

So why should investors in natural resources care about the sad history of American corruption, greed, and sheer stupidity. It’s because one of the totally unforeseen long term consequences was the shift to Asia of the demand for not only the final assembly and the manufacturing of the parts necessary for such assembly, but ultimately of the TOTAL SUPPLY CHAIN BEGINNING WITH AND INCLUDING THE MINING AND REFINING OF THE MINERALS. This shift has meant the loss of not only the physical plant for total supply chains but the withering away by the attrition of non-use of the intellectual basis of such industrial processes.

The rare supply earth situation, which has been highlighted in the USA for the last few years, is just the tip of the iceberg the body of which is the loss or collapse of the capability to build or operate a total supply chain for a given critical material when the first steps of that supply chain have been moved off-shore.

Clueless and engineering-ignorant American environmentalists for whom mining and refining are simply evil incarnate have managed over the last generation to force re-election-only driven legislators to favor the closing of sites producing natural resources for energy and manufacturing and the imposing of regulations that make such production simply too time consuming as well as adding enormous costs .

The dwindling proportion of capital targeted to increasing productive capacity remaining in a system being squeezed dry of such capital by pure financial speculators seeking short term gain has now made it more productive to move entire supply chains off-shore to where the raw materials CAN being mined and refined rather than to waste capital on endless regulations and battles with the ignorant and suicidal (or ignorant and rich). The result has been at best to increase the cost of re-starting a supply chain and at worst to make it intellectually impossible if only domestic resources are to be utilized.

I note in passing that America’s most important remaining engine of wealth creation is its innovative high-tech industries. These industries, such as electronics and healthcare, have been responsible for more improvement in the standards of living and lifestyle of the peoples of the world than any other intellectual force in history. The American electronics, aerospace, and nuclear industries have held out off-shoring their research and development, but sadly they have only managed to do that by enticing the best of the Asian students to come and work in the USA.

For a generation this worked well, because such individuals for the most part preferred to stay in the USA to utilize their American honed and learned skills to enjoy a better life style than they could at “home.” And to have the opportunity to create their own businesses. Today that situation has changed as places like China and India have improved enough in opportunity-availability to entice their brightest and best to stay home or even to come home. The American mining and refining industry has also had its share of bringing skilled Asian workers and engineers to the USA from China and India and like the high tech manufacturing industries it has now seen the outflow of these same people with their American honed skills and technological improvements back to their “home” countries.” Asian engineers who specialize in mining and refining engineering are very unlikely to remain in an America that blocks them from opportunity at every step.

America’s greatest inherent advantage in the production of natural resources is based on

  1. The variety of items in which North America can be self-sufficient,
  2. The safety of American natural resource production, and
  3. The productivity of North American mining technology and personnel.

The hypocrisy and sheer stupidity of those who want to stop producing natural resources in North America, so that we can get them from places where civil liberties are frequently nonexistent, productivity is low, safety is poor, women are treated worse than domestic animals, and the standards of living are appalling is simply beyond understanding.

I think that January 1, 2012 is as good a date as any to focus on the fact that maintaining a steady flow of affordable raw materials for energy production, food production, and manufacturing all at prices we can afford, which will let our economy GROW without lowering our standard of living is now the imperative.

The problem is that while we are trying to maintain production levels and costs the BRICS are trying to increase the production of the same materials at a rate never before seen in history. It is unlikely that America can ever again be a major supplier of extractive resources to an export led domestic manufacturing industry. We have waited too long and have simply lost the will and the capability to restore that capacity.

We can however conserve capital and reduce debt by becoming self-sufficient in energy and by again being entirely self-sufficient in metals and minerals for our domestic needs. The demand for technology materials of all kinds is ultimately now and in the future to be driven by the BRICS as all of them struggle to build military-technology-industrial complexes. The USA cannot hope to supply the BRICS with structural metal ores or fabricated products, because we waited too long to get into the game. Our structural metal industries cannot now, and have been unable to, compete with those of China or India on price since at least the middle of the last decade. The move to financialization destroyed any hope of American financiers creating truly global metals and minerals giants such as Rio Tinto or BHP. However there is still time remaining for the USA to become a technology materials powerhouse for ourselves and for the world.

The USA and North America are rich in the extractive resources of the metals and minerals that are critical to mass producing high tech devices for all uses civilian and military. The USA and Canada combined currently also lead the world in mining and refining engineering as well as technological innovation. The USA, however, is entering upon the last decade during which it has a chance to return to self-sufficiency and innovative leadership in technology. Once these opportunities are gone the world will have passed us by, and the result will be the slow erosion of our standard of living and of any further opportunities for growth. Canada has been a patient partner, our largest supplier of natural resources, but Canada’s population cannot support the creation of enough capital to move North America into the position of the world’s premier and central supplier of technology materials.

Small investors need to take note that the first decade of the 21st century saw more change in both the movement and the composition of the world’s metals markets than any other comparable period in history. The changes are permanent and their cause is an irreversible and fundamental change in the geography of the global raw materials trade. The driving center of the trade is no longer in the west; it is today in east Asia.

I believe that you can safely relegate the bulk of twentieth century punditry and scholarship on the cycles of the production and prices of metals in peacetime to the scrap heap. There they join such ideas and common wisdom as “the end of history” and descriptions of China as a third-world or developing country. In 2011 as in the prior decade, China and the other “developing” countries of southeast Asia continued to grow their GDPs at a rate of at least 3, and as much as 4, times the pace of the US or Europe. And since their common target, not their target in common, is to develop technology-military-industrial economies with a per capita GDP at least equal to that of the pre-2008 USA the rapidly growing economies of the nations of south and east Asia, and soon, if not already, of Brazil are consuming, in an unprecedented accelerated timeframe, the same volumes of base metals, mainly for fixed infrastructure and for transportation, that the USA and Europe produced and consumed in the from the beginning of the age of steel, 1867, until now!

The strain this acceleration of and growth of demand has put on the world’s productive capacity for the ores of the base metals has now highlighted the differences among the base metals themselves by resolving them, by use, into the structural metals and the enabling structural metals. China alone today, in 2011, already uses 60% of all of the iron ore mined globally and 33% of the aluminum ore. Huge investments of capital in the ores of both of these base structural metals have been made outside of China solely for the purpose of supplying just China. Investors should note that unless the demand for base structural metals grows in the other BRICS-the resource rich and/or resource mega-demanding nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa- China could create chaos in the world iron-ore market simply by increasing its domestic output to self-sufficiency, which is in fact possible, although not today economical. This game changing event, Chinese self-sufficiency in iron ore, which is actually predicted by Rio Tinto to take place by 2020, would, without a buildup in demand outside of China, throw global iron ore production into a vast oversupply status thus collapsing prices. By simply, albeit expensively, moving forward towards self-sufficiency China puts downward pressure on global iron ore prices. Strategic investors should now look for the most efficient low cost producers and fabricators of steel and aluminum outside of China, because the creation of a massive non-Chinese demand is absolutely necessary for the non-Chinese owned iron ore industry.

The ores of iron and aluminum are available in proven accessible deposits in great abundance. The proven resources of these ores are sufficient even at present global demand to sustain the global steel and aluminum industries for centuries. As long as energy is plentiful and relatively cheap the global production of steel and aluminum will continue, but continue to grow only through demand from the “developing” countries. Strategically I think that Russia is far from any meaningful development. I am looking at India and Brazil as demand drivers for iron and aluminum. Both are today self-sufficient in iron ore and both are world class exporters. Note well though that should either’s economy ever require the importing of iron or aluminum ore while at the same time Chinese demand were stable at today’s rate, or continued growing, there would then be a run-up in iron ore prices that would dwarf those of the last 10 years. In that case Australia would be the big winner. Australia’s demand for steel can never require more than a small fraction of its capacity to supply of iron ore. The unknown factor in all of this, in the long run, is China, which could become an exporter of iron ore in the 2020s.

Whatever commodity scenario one plots for the long term it is now always Asian demand that is critical. America’s future is tied to sophisticated supply chain developments for natural resources.

I personally do not believe that China will become an exporter anytime soon of iron ore, as a raw material, unless such action becomes necessary to maintain employment in the Chinese mining industry and then only after domestic demand is satisfied.

Additionally it should be noted by strategic investors that a China, self-sufficient, or in an ownership situation globally of resources to make itself self-sufficient, in iron ore, coking coal, limestone, bauxite, and cryolite could easily come to dominate the global supply of steel and aluminum.

It is ironic that monopoly capitalism with Chinese characteristics is the true threat to so-called free market capitalism, which considers monopoly capitalism to be counter-productive to the fair distribution of wealth because it concentrates wealth in too few hands and hands pricing power solely to the monopolist. Yet the Chinese have chosen state monopolized capitalism to ensure the distribution of the wealth created to the largest number of Chinese people. The Chinese system is as much a threat to western economic philosophy as it is a threat to western lifestyles and standards of living. The biggest problem is that even as production rate investments consume more and more western capital it is not at all clear that the prices for the materials so produced will be set by a free market. Thus such investments are high risk-in fact this is exactly the problem in the current rare earths production buildup. There has been almost no change in the geographic center of rare earth demand, China. This means that Chinese moves to regulate its environment, improve worker health, safety, and compensation, and to direct its economy away from being export led to being domestic consumer demand driven will be the drivers for rare earth pricing. When one takes into consideration Chinese moves into global finance are targeted so as to keep Chinese manufacturing competitive this means ultimately a convertible currency in which raw materials such as the rare earths are denominated.

So long as America is dominated by a Wall Street and Washington elite that believes that a man’s worth is measured by the capital he accumulates whether or not it is used productively to make products and create jobs there is no contest. China is winning

By: Jack Lifton
Source: http://www.raremetalblog.com/2012/01/2012-the-recognition-of-the-age-of-critical-technology-materials-the-following-essay-was-written-over-new-years-weekend.html

Rare Earths and Strategic Metals: A Lateral Look at 2011

Rare Earth Elements

Nationalism, the search for substitutes and deals to address short supplies consumed the spotlight in 2011 for rare earth elements.

In addition to the skyrocketing of rare earth elements’ prices (and their subsequent fall to Earth), and constant speculation as to which junior rare earth exploration companies are going to survive, the calendars of both the rare earths and strategic metals have been quite full in 2011.

While some of the events filling their calendars have received often considerable coverage in the press, others have not drawn so much attention. As 2011 has come to a close, it is perhaps worth looking to see if any themes have emerged.

I have singled out three themes, not all of which have received the spotlight, but that I consider to be of interest as well as importance:

  • Resource nationalism
  • The search for substitutes
  • Deals to address dearth

Resource Nationalism

If nothing else, the intense interest in rare earths over the past several years has coincided with countries focusing on several issues, e.g., their own access to strategic minerals (and not just rare earths) and the value of the mineral resources they already own.

With the example of China aside, the focus on these has coincided with proposed and actual government policy developments among various mining nations, in the areas of resource protection as well as the further realization and “distribution” of the value of those resources.

Back in November, the lower house of the Australian parliament approved the new Mineral Resource Rent Tax (MRRT). Aimed at further tapping the earnings of the country’s resources sector, the tax currently targets only coal and iron ore. However, only time will tell if the targets remain solely those resources.

On the other hand, events in two African countries have not received as much press. In South Africa, the future of the country’s natural resources sector (and the fate of its mining companies) is soon to be squarely in the limelight. On Jan. 30, the ANC’s national executive committee will consider just how, and how much, the state should be involved in the sector.

While what the Australians are doing appears to be attractive to some, of the 13 different country models that have been studied, it seems that Chile’s mixed private/public example in the mining sector is a favorite. On the other hand, nationalization cannot yet be fully ruled out.

For example, in Namibia, at the end of March, again in a move to try to ensure that its people share in its natural resource wealth, the country’s cabinet backed a proposal that only the state-owned mining company — Epangelo — should be issued mineral exploration and mining permits.

Unfortunately, the government’s announcement was not accompanied by an explanation as to how those foreign mining companies already on the ground were to be treated, leading to significant consternation and confusion among such companies and prospective investors in the mining sector in Namibia.

Then, in the middle of May, the country’s minister for mines and energy minister, Isak Katali, announced that the government was seeking to introduce a minerals-windfall tax. This was followed in July by the announcement of proposed Draconian taxes on the mining sector by the country’s finance minister, Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila. However, so adverse was the fallout of the announcement, especially amongst investors, that on Aug. 17, the government was forced to back-pedal, with Calle Schlettwein, the deputy finance minister, announcing a scaled-down tax plan, not least in an effort to allay investors’ fears.

These are just two examples among many. In its report, Business Risks Facing Mining & Metals 2011-2012, published in August 2011, Ernst & Young reported that, over the prior 12-18 months, at least 25 countries had announced their “intentions to increase their government take of the mining industry’s profits via taxes or royalties.”

The Search For Substitutes

The search for substitutes, both for members of the rare earths elements (REE) clan and other strategic metals, continued apace this year. And it was particularly busy vis-a-vis REEs. The search, however, has not just been for effective substitutes, or reduced usage, within certain applications, but also for substitute technologies that may not necessarily include the metal(s) at all.

In the area of catalysts for oil refining, W.R. Grace & Co. started to sell equally efficient catalysts, but containing considerably less lanthanum than before. The German firm Cofermin Chemicals GmbH & Co. KG of Essen developed its product Coferpol UG, a substitute for cerium oxide used in the polishing of glass.

In the world of permanent magnet electric motors, the likes of Toyota Motor Corp. General Motors and GE are looking at using magnets with less REE content than before, or just smaller magnets. And some companies are even exploring the use of ferrite magnets as suitable substitutes.

What has also become apparent is that, in certain instances, the use of REEs has been perhaps somewhat profligate, so much so that their use now, in reduced volumes, has not made a significant difference in performance.

Earlier in 2011, as part of its policy of encouraging (and funding) renewable energy projects, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), made up to $30 million available for its REACT (Rare Earth Alternatives in Critical Technologies) project that will look at either reducing or eliminating, through the development of substitutes, a dependence on rare earth materials in both wind generators and electric vehicle motors.

In terms of substitute technologies, perhaps the most ironic has been the espousal, not least by the likes of Toyota and General Motors, of the induction motor, which does not use any rare earths metals. Such a motor is already used in the Tesla Roadster and BMW’s Mini-E.

The A/C induction motor has been around for a long time, having been patented back in 1888 by the American inventor and, some would say, eccentric Nikola Tesla. In addition to being both durable and simple, such motors have the considerable added advantage of being able to operate efficiently over a wide range of temperatures. They also comport themselves very respectably on the torque front!

Were he around to see what they are being used for now, Tesla would likely be spinning asynchronously in his grave — with amusement!

Away from the realm of REEs, other interesting areas of substitution include the increasing use of gallium nitride, as a more energy-efficient alternative, in the likes of the high-voltages switches associated with the grid. Such switches, and efficient switching, will become especially important as wind and solar energy increasingly needs to be “fed in” to the grid.

ARPA-E is also making some $30 million available for research in this area through its GENI (Green Electricity Network Integration) project and, in Europe, in November, the Ferdinand-Braun-Institute in Berlin announced the launch of the EU project HiPoSwitch, which will receive significant funding from the European community and will focus on “novel gallium nitride-based transistors” as “key switching devices” in power conversion and high-voltage environments.

Finally, also on the substitute technologies front, around the middle of November, a few quite interesting news items mentioned the use of that staple in steel production, vanadium, in a different context — electric batteries. While such batteries have been around since at least the ’80s, the technology has not yet been developed commercially with any degree of success.

With the advent of and interest in electric vehicles, this may all change. There’s still a long way to go, but vanadium batteries do offer some interesting (and, potentially, very important) advantages, not least their longevity (decades) and the fact they can be charged in a jiffy.

Deals To Address Dearth

This past year saw a number of deals, including strategic alliances, out of which various countries have secured much needed supplies of critical minerals. Among those that have either been consummated, or are still in the works, the following, going forward, will be worth remembering:

  • Three Chinese companies — Taiyuan Iron and Steel (Group) Co. Ltd., CITIC Group and Baoshan Iron and Steel Group (Baosteel) — purchased 15 percent of CBMM of Brazil, the world’s largest supplier of niobium. (China is the world’s largest consumer of niobium.)
  • Continuing negotiations between Namibia’s Epangelo and China’s CGNPC Uranium Resources Co. over a strategic ownership stake in the Husab uranium project.
  • Japan’s agreements with both India (end-October) and Vietnam (Nov. 1) to help each develop its rare earth deposits, with Japan, thereby seeking to secure supplies for itself.
  • The agreement reached in early October by Germany with Mongolia (a first such deal for the Germany government), to secure REEs at a fair price for Germany.
  • The signature by Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom of a rare earths joint venture agreement with Toshiba (end-September). (The state-owned company had already signed one with Sumitomo back in March 2010.)

On the other hand, one deal to have fallen significantly apart this year was between China and Zimbabwe over chrome. Unfortunately for Zimbabwe, it failed to beat China at its own game, the “value added” game.

Hoping to add value by having a group of seven Chinese chrome mining companies set up a smelter in the country, and despite two reprieves, the Chinese never came up with the smelter. They just continued to export the raw material before the government imposed a ban on chrome exports in April. Hauled up in front of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy at the end of September, it appears that representatives of the companies had the temerity to request “a grace period of five more years to mobilize resources to establish the plant through exporting the mineral.” Quite understandably, “Their request caused an uproar among members of the committee, who felt that if they were allowed to export, the chrome resources would be finished in five years before any plant was set up.”

Finally, at a corporate level, two particular deals caught my eye.

The first was the closing, on May 26, of the deal in which the Canadian company Stans Energy Corp. acquired 100 percent ownership of the Kyrgyz Chemical Metallurgical Plant (KCMP) Rare Earth Processing Complex and Private Rail Terminal. For some three decades, the plant, in Stans’ words “produced 80 percent of the former Soviet Union’s RE products.” Since May, the company has continued further to consolidate its position in Kyrgyzstan.

The second deal, about which not much was seen in the press, was the announcement of the formation in June of a 50/50 joint venture between France’s ERAMET (with a market cap at the time of around €5.8 billion and currently employing around 15,000 people in 20 countries) and Australia’s Mineral Deposits (with a market cap of considerably less and employing just 90 at the end of June) to “combine Mineral Deposit’s 90 percent interest in the Grande Cote Mineral Sands Project (“Grande Cote”) [in Senegal] and Eramet’s Tyssedal titanium slag and iron plant in Norway.” The deal was finally closed on Oct. 25.

Afterword

If nothing else, during 2011 there has developed, albeit slowly, a realization that REEs alone are not the name of the game. And that countries and corporations alike need to look across the spectrum of the materials — particularly minerals — they use to determine which are critical, which are not and how to secure the relevant supply chains.

While some larger concerns — for example GE — have been doing this for some time now, as a continuing and constantly evolving process, it is something that all organizations using REEs and/or other strategic metals need to undertake. It is perhaps salutary that even now, the U.S. Department of Defense has, as far as I am aware, yet to report on REE use in its weapon and technology systems, although they were asked to do so some time ago.

Henceforth, there will be no plausible excuse of “We didn’t realize how important they were!”

By: Ton Vulcan
Source: http://www.hardassetsinvestor.com/features/3339-rare-earths-and-strategic-metals-a-lateral-look-at-2011.html

Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China

Niobium Crystals

Laptops, cars, smartphones, TVs, MRI scanners, LCD displays, light bulbs, optical networks, jet engines, cameras, headphones, nuclear reactors. It might seem like a random selection of high-tech gizmos, but every single object on that list has one very important thing in common: Their manufacture requires one or more rare earth metals.

Rare earths — a block of seventeen elements in the middle of the Periodic Table — aren’t actually all that rare, but they tend to be very hard to obtain commercially. Generally, rare earth elements are only found in minute quantities in mineral deposits of clay, sand, and rock (earths!), which must then be processed to extract the rare metals — an expensive process, and also costly for the environment as billions of tons of ore must be mined and refined to yield just a few tons of usable rare earths.

Many rare earths are also geochemically rare — they can only be mined in a handful of countries. This is simply down to Mother Nature being a tempestuous so-and-so: Some countries have deposits of rare earths, and some don’t. This results in massively skewed production (China famously produces 97% of the world’s rare earth metals), and, as you can imagine, a lot of national security and geopolitical troubles, too.

It doesn’t stop with rare earths, either: Many other important elements, such as platinum, are only available from one or two mines in the entire world. If South Africa sustained a huge earthquake — or was on the receiving end of a thermonuclear bomb, perhaps — the world’s supply of platinum would literally dry up over night. The continued existence of technologies that rely on platinum, like car exhaust catalytic converters and fuel cells, would be unlikely.

If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord — some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of the bloodiest wars since World War II. Not only do the proceeds from coltan exports get spent on weapons, but the main focus of the wars were the stretches of land rich in diamonds and coltan.

Also along the same humanist vein, it’s important to note that extracting these rare elements is usually a very expensive and disruptive activity. Indium, probably the single most important element for the manufacture of LCDs and touchscreens, is recovered in minute quantities as a byproduct of zinc extraction. You can’t just set up an indium plant; you have to produce zinc in huge quantities, find buyers and arrange transport for that zinc, and then go to town on producing indium. In short, extracting rare elements is generally a very intensive task that is likely to disrupt or destroy existing settlements and businesses.

The rare earth apocalypse

The doomsday event that everyone is praying will never come to pass, but which every Western nation is currently planning for, is the eventual cut-off of Chinese rare earth exports. Last year, 97% of the world’s rare earth metals were produced in China — but over the last few years, the Chinese government has been shutting down mines, ostensibly to save what resources it has, and also reducing the amount of rare earth that can be exported. Last year, China produced some 130,000 tons of rare earths, but export restrictions meant that only 35,000 tons were sent to other countries. As a result, demand outside China now outstrips supply by some 40,000 tons per year, and — as expected — many countries are now stockpiling the reserves that they have.

Almost every Western country is now digging around in their backyard for rare earth-rich mud and sand, but it’ll probably be too little too late — and anyway, due to geochemistry, there’s no guarantee that explorers and assayers will find what they’re looking for. The price of rare earths are already going up, and so are the non-Chinese-made gadgets and gizmos that use them. Exacerbating the issue yet further, as technology grows more advanced, our reliance on the strange and magical properties of rare earths increases — and China, with the world’s largest workforce and a fire hose of rare earths, is perfectly poised to become the only real producer of solar power photovoltaic cells, computer chips, and more.

In short, China has the world by the short hairs, and when combined with a hotting-up cyber front, it’s not hard to see how this situation might devolve into World War III. The alternate, ecological point of view, is that we’re simply living beyond the planet’s means. Either way, strategic and logistic planning to make the most of scarce metals and minerals is now one of the most important tasks that face governments and corporations. Even if large rare earth deposits are found soon, or we start recycling our gadgets in a big way, the only real solution is to somehow lessen our reliance on a finite resource. Just like oil and energy, this will probably require drastic technological leaps. Instead of reducing the amount of tantalum used in capacitors, or indium in LCD displays, we will probably have to discover completely different ways of storing energy or displaying images. My money’s on graphene.

By Sebastian Anthony
Source: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/111029-rare-earth-crisis-innovate-or-be-crushed-by-china

Supply Threats Persist For Thin-Film Solar Materials Due To Competition

Cadmium Telluride Thin-Film Modules

One year ago, a report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on the global supply of essential PV module materials predicted possible disruptions for thin-film manufacturing.

The availability of indium, gallium and tellurium was examined in the context of current and future production needs, and the DOE found cause for concern. Indium and tellurium were pegged as especially vulnerable to supply tightness and price volatility, according to both the report and several market analysts at the time.

Now, the DOE has released the latest edition of its Critical Materials Strategy. Have the worries over thin-film PV materials supply eased? According to the DOE, the general supply-demand picture for indium, gallium and tellurium has “improved slightly,” but the situation is not entirely reassuring. The three metals are still highlighted (alongside neodymium and dysprosium) as clean-energy materials that face a “significant risk of supply chain bottlenecks in the next two decades.”

The report attributes the slight improvement primarily to decreased demand for the three thin-film materials: Although PV deployment is expected to grow, the requirements of the materials per module are expected to shrink.

For copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) modules, manufacturers are shifting to compositions with higher proportions of gallium and lower concentrations of indium, the DOE says. The result is a “partial trade-off in the potential for supply risk between the two elements.” At the same time, CIGS’ market share assumption has been reduced under the DOE’s new calculations, lowering projected demand for both indium and gallium.

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film modules currently account for approximately 10% of the PV market, according to the report. Declining silicon prices may threaten this slice of the market, but high tellurium costs and the increasing need for CdTe manufacturers to compete for supply with non-PV companies requiring tellurium continue to cause supply headaches.

“The cost of tellurium is a critical issue for CdTe solar cell makers, and the industry is working to lower material use and increasing recovery of new scrap to reduce reliance on primary tellurium,” the DOE says in the report.

Although short-term supply of tellurium appears adequate, future capacity increases may be insufficient to supply both CdTe manufacturing and the multitude of other manufacturing sectors that use tellurium. Under one scenario modeled in the report, tellurium supply would need to increase 50% more than its projected 2015 total in order to meet expected demand.

Indium and gallium have also experienced increased popularity in non-PV manufacturing uses, such as semiconductor applications, flat-panel displays, and coatings for smartphones and tablet computers. The DOE forecasts that as a result, supplies may run short by 2015 unless production of these materials is increased - or non-PV demand lessens.

Of the two metals, gallium poses more cause for concern, as the DOE has adjusted its assumptions of future gallium use under CIGS manufacturers’ expected manufacturing modifications.

“These higher estimates [of gallium requirements] are driven largely by the assumption that gallium will increasingly be substituted for indium in CIGS composition,” the DOE explains. This change points to the benefits of reducing material intensity in other aspects of PV manufacturing, such as reducing cell thickness and improving processing efficiency.

Overall, indium, gallium and tellurium all receive moderate scores (2 or 3 on a scale of 1 to 4) from the DOE with regard to both their importance to clean energy and short- and medium-term supply risk.

In order to help mitigate possible supply disruptions that could threaten the manufacturing and deployment of PV, as well as other types of clean energy, the agency has developed a three-pronged approach.

“First, diversified global supply chains are essential,” the DOE stresses in the report. “To manage supply risk, multiple sources of materials are required. This means taking steps to facilitate extraction, processing and manufacturing here in the United States, as well as encouraging other nations to expedite alternative supplies.”

The second strategy relies on developing alternatives to materials whose supply may be constrained. For PV, one DOE research program focuses on advancements in thin-film formulations such as copper-zinc-tin and sulfide-selenide. Another initiative funds research and development into PV inks based on earth-abundant materials such as zinc, sulfur and copper.

“Several projects also seek to use iron pyrite - also known as fool’s gold - to develop prototype solar cells,” the DOE notes in the report. “Pyrite is non-toxic, inexpensive, and is the most abundant sulfide mineral in the Earth’s crust.”

Finally, improving recycling and reuse mechanisms can reduce demand for new materials, the DOE says, adding that these strategies also can help improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes.

By: SI Staff
Source: http://www.aer-online.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.9408

Photo: Enbridge Inc.’s 5 MW Tilbury solar project in Ontario uses First Solar’s cadmium telluride thin-film modules. Photo credit: Enbridge

Critical Reading for Rare Earth Metals Investors

Rare Earth Element - Yttrium

A quick search of media stories from the month of December, 2009 shows 24 clips including references to the 15 lanthanides and their related elements scandium and yttrium. By contrast, one day in December, 2011 produced 56 stories on the same resources. Even the tone of REE coverage has transformed over the years. Two years ago, an analyst piece from veteran metals consultant Jack Lifton titled “Underpriced Rare Earth Metals from China Have Created a Supply Crisis ” was a common headline as the world discovered that cheap supplies had left manufacturers vulnerable to a monopoly with an agenda. That supply fear made REE the investment de jour and sent almost all of the rare earth prices through the roof. In December of 2010, the headlines in big outlets like The Motley Fool announced that the “Spot Price of Rare Earth Elements Soar as much as 750% since Jan. 2010.”

Reality soon set in as investors realized that this was not a simple supply and demand industry. First, demand was still vague, subject to change and very specific about the type and purity of the product being delivered. Second, the ramp-up period for companies exploring, getting approval for development, mining, processing efficiently and delivering to an end-user was very, very long. Some became discouraged. That is why this year, the consumer finance site, The Daily Markets ran an article with the headline: “Why You Shouldn’t Give Up on the Rare Earth Element Minerals” by Gold Stock Trades Newsletter Writer Jeb Handwerger.

Through it all, Streetwise Reports has focused on cutting through the hype to explain what is really driving demand, how the economy and geopolitics shape supplies going forward and which few of the hundreds of companies adding REE to their company descriptions actually had a chance of making a profit.

Back in June of 2009, in an interview titled “The Race to Rare Earths,” we ran an interview with Kaiser Research Online Editor John Kaiser that concluded “China’s export-based economy, once dependent on American greed, is now but a fading memory. While the U.S. was busy printing and preening, the Chinese were long-range planning. But America wasn’t the only country caught off guard by China’s strategic, if surreptitious, supply procurement.” Even while other analysts were panicking, Kaiser was pointing out how investors could be part of the solution–and make a profit in the process.

“For the juniors, the opportunity right now is to source these projects. They get title to them, and when these end users want to develop them, they’re going to have to pay a premium to have these projects developed,” Kaiser said. “So it will not be economic logic that results in these companies getting bought out and having their deposits developed. It’ll be a strategic logic linked to long-term security-of-supply and redundancy concerns. And we’re seeing that sort of psychology at work in this market. It’s a bit of a niche in this market. Not as big as gold, but it is an interesting one because of the long-term real economy link implications.”

After years of covering the space by interviewing the growing chorus of analysts and newsletter writers singing the praises of rare earth elements, in June of 2011, we launched The Critical Metals Report to give exclusive coverage to the entire space, including rare earth elements, strategic metals and specialty metals. One of the first experts interviewed was Emerging Trends Report Managing Editor Richard Karn in an article called “50 Specialty Metals under Supply Threat.” He warned that investing in the space is not as simple as some other mining operations. “The market is just starting to become aware of the difficulty involved with processing these metals, which, in many cases, more closely resemble sophisticated industrial chemistry than traditional onsite brute processing. Putting flow sheets together that process these metals and elements economically is no mean feat.”

In this early article, Karn busted the myth that manufacturers would find substitutions, engineer out or use recycled supplies for hard-to-access materials. “The advances we have seen especially in consumer electronics over the last decade and a half have not been driven by lone inventors or college kids tinkering in their parents’ garages, but rather by very large, well-equipped and well-staffed research arms of powerful corporations. The stakes are high and if a certain metal is critical in an application, they will buy it regardless of the price,” he said.

Similarly, a July 2011 article for The Critical Metals Report featured Energy and Scarcity Editor Byron King sharing “The Real REE Demand Opportunity” driven by the automobile industry and beyond. He was one of the first to point out that not all rare earths are the same with Heavy Rare Earth Elements demanding big premiums.

“Going forward, the serious money will be in HREEs, which have a lot of uses other than EVs,” King said. “For example, yttrium is used in high-temperature refractory products. There’s no substitute for yttrium. Without it, you can’t make the refractory molds needed to make jet-engine turbine blades. If you can’t make jet-engine turbine blades, you don’t have jet engines or power turbines. The price points for these HREEs will reflect true scarcity and unalterable demand. People will bite the bullet and pay what they have to in order to get the yttrium.”

House Mountain Partners Founder Chris Berry also addressed the impact of electric vehicle demand on vanadium, a popular steel alloy strengthener now being used in lithium-ion batteries in the interview “Can Electric Vehicles Drive Vanadium Demand? “

“The use of vanadium in LIBs for EVs is not significant yet, but could eventually become important as the transportation sector electrifies. One of the real challenges surrounding LIBs is settling on the most effective battery chemistry. In other words, what battery chemistry allows for the greatest number of charge recycles, depletes its charge the slowest and allows us to recharge the fastest? Today, based on my research, lithium-vanadium-phosphate batteries appear to offer the highest charge and the fastest recharge cycle. It seems that the lithium-vanadium-phosphate battery holds a great deal of promise, offering a blend of substantial power and reliability. I am watching for advances in battery chemistry here with great interest,” Berry said.

In September, Technology Metals Research Founding Principal Jack Lifton shared his insights on why some junior REE companies are prospering while others wither and die. In the article, “Profit from Really Critical Rare Earth Elements,” he said: “Rare earth junior miners are now being culled by their inability to raise enough capital to carry their projects forward to a place where either the product produced directly or the value to be gained from the company’s development to that point by a buyer can be more profitable than a less risky investment. The majority of the rare earth junior miners do not understand the supply chain through which the critical rare earth metals become industrial or consumer products. Additionally, they do not seem to recognize the value chain issue, which can be stated as ‘How far downstream in the supply chain do I need to take my rare earths in order to be able to sell them at a profit?’”

Then Lifton made this important point for Critical Metals Report readers. “It is very important for the small investor to understand that the share market does not directly benefit the listed company unless the company either sells more of its ownership or pledges future production for present, almost always sharply discounted, revenue.” As always, Lifton encouraged investors to follow the money to a specific end rather than the general market demand often envisioned by investors accustomed to the more defined gold market.

In October, JF Zhang Associates’ Principal Consultant and Chief China Strategist J. Peter Zhang shared his insights on “U.S. Manganese Supply as a Strategic Necessity.”

Manganese is now largely used largely in the production of low quality stainless steel, but is being incorporated into lithium-ion batteries. That increased demand is focusing attention on the limited supply outside China. “There really is no electrolytic manganese metals production in the U.S. or anywhere outside China except for a small percentage from South Africa. We don’t produce even a single ounce in North America. Relying on other countries to supply essential commodities (like oil for instance) is always a problem. If China suddenly decided to reduce production, or in the likely event that its domestic demand increases, the world would be out of options. Policymakers need to understand this risk and Congress needs to take action to minimize the potential impacts,” he said. “From the end of 2008 to 2009, China tied things up. Since then, the price has doubled, tripled and quadrupled. That should be a wakeup call. North America needs to either establish a strategic reserve system for critical metals or build production capacity to mitigate supply risk. I think there is some sense of urgency right now, but a lot more needs to be done.”

Picking the right junior is the trick. In the November article “Navigating the Rare Earth Metals Landscape” Technology Metals Research Founding Principal Gareth Hatch outlined the odds. “TMR is tracking well over 390 different rare earth projects at present; I can’t see more than 8-10 coming onstream in the next 5-7 years. Projects already well past exploration and into the development and engineering stage, and beyond, clearly have first-mover advantage.”

Just this month, in an interview entitled, “The Age of Rare Earth Metals” Jacob Securities Analyst Luisa Moreno compared the impact REEs will have on our daily lives with the transformation in the Bronze Age.

“There is an economic war over the rare earths, with China on one side and other industrialized nations on the other—Japan, the United States and the E.U. China is probably winning. It has decreased exports in the last few years and increased protection. It has attracted a great deal of the downstream business and it is positioning itself well. At this point, it produces most of the world’s rare earths, and prices are at record highs. Japan and the other countries have been left with few options, and those options are more expensive, such as substitution, recycling and adapting production lines to use less efficient materials.” Moreno then pointed to the seven companies that could come to the world’s rescue and usher in a miraculous new world of smaller, stronger, more powerful gadgets based on a steady supply of REE materials from reliable sources.

By: The Gold Report
Source: http://jutiagroup.com/20111227-critical-reading-for-rare-earth-metals-investors/