Interesting post @tankhexmanLots of comodities have been managed...

Interesting post @tankhexman

Lots of comodities have been managed by China for many decades and very succesfully too. The resultant monopoly on critical minerals refining in mainland China is truly massive, add to that, its an anointed strategic sovereign issue in China.

Not a single Western refinery using approved supply/quality chains could compete with prices from Chinese hub refinery centres, well not for a long time anyway. The supply into these refining hubs is intentionally opaque in both quality/price, plus regardless of both of these the end price can be set.

As an example we had rare earths just about accepted by the West as a sole Chinese export product once. China on the other hand manipulated the rare earth prices to smash any competition for decades. Having been an investor with Lynas way back in the early days its pleaseing to see it's one that got away, largely down to Japan at the time who moved alone then to protect supply, but the writing was on the wall for the future.

I guess it is up to investors to decide if the West through regulations like the IRA will be successful. If someone is in the camp that sees current cobalt prices as an impediment to the establishment of alternative non Chinese supply chains, then fair enough, but its not my take on what going on here.

The aim is to produce 3,000 tpa cobalt sulphate and 1,000 tpa nickel sulphate as a first stage (none of this input will be from the BHCP for this stage) from a new refinery due to start construction next year. The funding/structure is unknown at this stage, I assume it would need the DFS completed and with some not insignificant changes to the original plan, I can understandably see why its been delayed a tad.


Cheers
Phil.
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