Interesting you mention Sojitz. Most would be aware they are the big trading house in Japan, big as in some 400 trading subsidiary companies, trading in just about everything, if it can be traded they have a unit to do it in any part of the world. I was first directly exposed to them way back when Lynas was seeking funds in the rare earth space, they have a history of investing in Australia. The reason I say it's interesting is that if you go back to 2020 Sojitz were the only consenting name who participated in COB's cobalt first sample program for mixed hydroxide and sulphate.
Were did those 3 years go eh! Well Covid took out a fair bit, then the recovery, then COB toiled away at Broken Hill with pilot, demonstration and mine etc, the time flew by. Then something odd happened, well for me it was odd because I never considered the West was up to it.
In business I have travelled all over China, I know it well, so when In 2022 the USA introduced a radical act to challenge China's dominance with the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) Europe followed with the CRMA (Critical Raw Materials Act) I stood happily well and truly corrected in thinking that I would never see that day.
In short both were established to control critical mineral streams from mine to new energy units, wholly under the auspices of the West, all legislated by both US and EU. Certain countries will be granted in effect US benefits. If we are talking about a Sojitz then we know both Japan and Australia are inside the IRA and CRMA tent so to speak. You have to rethink the whole space, it's massive in terms of critical minerals, I know we talk cobalt here, but all of em! as long as they have nothing to do with a refinery on mainland China, its almost mind boggling having been up close to many sites in the past, its weird how we all championed how massive refining was in China, isn't it great they do all this dirty work for us
One big stick that has constantly been used has now been taken, that was the ability to crush new Western leaning projects by manipulating commodity market prices, the West will use different benchmarks.
I told a college who asked what I thought about it all, my comment then was, find out where all the guaranteed anointed jurisdictions are and buy anything in the critical minerals space after entity DD etc. No general advice given here btw.
Now I wait for a leak, always seemed to happened before with a big house, let's see.
Cheers
Phil.
p.s. .
