[ATTACH] US blames China’s CMOC for predatory tactics behind...

US blames China’s CMOC for predatory tactics behind cobalt glut

China’s CMOC Group Ltd. is being accused by a top US official of using “predatory” tactics to depress prices of a key battery metal by flooding the market with cobalt from DRC mines.

“What we’re seeing now, I feel, is a variation of predatory pricing,” Jose Fernandez, Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, said Monday at a conference in New York sponsored by the Cobalt Institute industry group.

His comments come as the US seeks to loosen China’s dominance of metals viewed as critical for supporting the energy transition from fossil fuels.

“In the case of cobalt, there’s a company called CMOC which is driving this oversupply and that’s keeping prices down,” Fernandez told Bloomberg in a separate interview.

The US official is the State Department lead for the Minerals Security Partnership, a collaboration of 14 countries and the European Union to raise public and private investment in “responsible critical minerals supply chains” worldwide.

Low cobalt prices are harming upstream producers and recyclers.

Australian miner Jervois Global Ltd. cut jobs in March in response to falling prices, which it blamed on Chinese oversupply.

The company also mothballed a project in Idaho last year, which would have been the first new US cobalt mine in decades.

mining.com


Albanese and Chalmers’ budget delivers $7bn splash for critical minerals refiners

• Canberra answers miners’ prayers, with $7b production tax credit at centre of $22b Future Made in Australia program
• The budget announcement could see 10% of operating costs for downstream processing in critical minerals like nickel, vanadium, lithium and rare earths returned to miners as a tax credit
• AMEC CEO Warren Pearce says the announcement will put Aussie critical minerals proponents on a level playing field with North American competitors

The Federal Government has acceded to demands from the mining industry, committing $7 billion over the next decade in a tax credit for companies who process and refine critical minerals on shore.

A key demand of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, the Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive will cover 10% of relevant processing and refining costs for the downstream processing of any of Australia’s 31 critical minerals for production between 2027-28 and 2039-40 as long as they reach FID by 2030.

Those metals include lithium and nickel, added to the Critical Minerals List in February after a price crash caused by oversupply from Chinese-funded miners in Indonesia which saw a swag of Aussie nickel mines bite the bullet.

The Federal Government will also provide $10m to work with States on pre-feasibility studies to develop common-user critical minerals infrastructure.

The announcement of the production tax credit, the most substantive government funding promise for battery metals, has been cautiously welcomed by miners.

“MinRes welcomes the Federal Government’s announcement.

This policy will help Australia move further down the battery supply chain to add more value to our critical minerals and create the jobs of the future,” a MinRes spokesperson said yesterday.

Its billionaire founder Chris Ellison has called for Government support for downstream processing which he says is otherwise a business which only offers single digit returns.

The policy was lobbied with information from a range of miners and developers across the critical minerals spectrum from Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo and ASX giants like MinRes and Pilbara Minerals, to mid-sized developers like Arafura Rare Earths and Liontown Resources to juniors like nickel hopeful Ardea Resources and even Elon Musk’s EV behemoth Tesla.

AMEC CEO Warren Pearce said the policy placed Australia and WA’s miners on an even playing field with Inflation Reduction Act era USA and other western jurisdictions as an investment destination for downstream.

“In this case, what we’ve done is leveled up.

So where we were two or three years ago, when Western Australia and Australia were attracting that investment for downstreaming, particularly in lithium, that was before the inflation Reduction Act, and most of those market interventions internationally,” Pearce told *.

“Now, we’ve got ourselves back on the playing field.

So we’re putting ourselves back in a position to be on a much more level footing with our international competitors.

“And because we’re the ones producing the minerals that comparative advantage now plays back in our favour, where it really was being overtaken by international incentives.”



IXR = Right place + Right time imo

Food for thought

Frank