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Ottawa urged to consider Beijing’s growing control over strategic minerals when weighing Chinese state firm’s bid for gold miner
MAY 18, 2020

China’s designs on Northern Canadian minerals in part prompted a recent joint U.S.-Canada strategy to reshape global metallic supply chains to reduce reliance on China, which has moved aggressively to control rare-earth minerals that are critical to high-tech and military products.

Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada, said the TMAC takeover has “raised eyebrows” within the industry because Shandong Gold Group is a Chinese state-owned enterprise. It’s prompting discussion about how this takeover would fit into the Canada-U.S. strategy to limit China’s involvement in rare-earth minerals, he said.

“I think the action plan is pretty serious and I think the commitment by Canada and the U.S. to lessen their dependence on the Chinese for these materials is pretty serious,” Mr. Gratton said.

Source

In the recent presentation by Geoff Atkins (MD), which can be viewed here: Source, he did suggest interest from governments and that the sector was heating up.

Vital Metals remains the most advanced REO project in North America with an exceptionally rapid lead time.

IMO, It won't be long before we get some degree of cooperation from the Canadian and/or US. government. Any such interest or agreements will completely re-rate VML to it's true value (currently enormously undervalued, considering project specifics, the sector and governmental attention to it)