China’s Gallium, Germanium, Graphite — Moly,  Next?

Another Nation Draws Minerals Line In Sand

China is restricting exports of EV battery material graphite.

“The geopolitics of the green economy just shifted gears,” Éric Desaulniers of Québec’s Nouveau Monde Graphite said in reaction. NMG shares, which I own, are down 60% in a year and got a 40% lift Friday from the graphite development. See Reuters article. Other graphite project developers, Brazil’s South Star Battery Metals STS for one, Ontario’s Northern Graphite NGC for another, also got lifts after a year of depressed shares. 

China is the largest supplier and processor of graphite and will use the permitting process (read: political) to stop-down shipping to other countries. Here is a monthly tracking service for prices.

Next up (uranium already in the count) for nationalistic minerals protection: molybdenum? Tungsten? Heavy rare earths such as dysprosium, yttrium and terbium? 

CMOC Group CMCLF 603993 is China’s largest moly refiner-producer, along with tungsten, and is said to be in the top 5 worldwide.

URANIUM: on a day when gold, silver, platinum, look to be shedding their 2023 torpor, I am spending time chatting with  the nuclear fuel’s ‘trusted’ * mining and exploration execs. 

This morning, I spoke via Whatsapp at length with Daniel Major, in his 12th year at GoviEX Uranium. GXU is developing projects in Zambia and alas, in coup-stricken, self-bankrupting Niger. We talked about the uranium spot and contract price rises this summer and autumn and the electricity requirements of Africa, Europe, the USA and Canada. 

Regarding China and uranium, China only produces 1,000 metric tons of uranium, Daniel said from his U.K. home. Some 7,000 metric tons come from a part-owned mine in Namibia. China, probably the world’s largest buyer of uranium, also taps Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Niger, Australia and Canada. Daniel Major’s GoviEx, which has ownership ties to Ivanhoe Capital (Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanhoe Energy, etc.), saw its shares hit hard after the July Niger coup.  

More to come from Daniel re: USA utilities such as California’s PG&E scrambling to fill mid-term uranium needs for their nuke plants; price maneuvers;  the Zambia project at Muntanga. 

The Calandra Report/TCR ‘TRUSTED’ ROSTER* regarding all things uranium: Marc Henderson at Laramide; Daniel Major at GoviEx Uranium GXU; Bill Sheriff at enCore Energy; Jordan Trimble at Skyharbour Resources SYHB; Cory Belyk at CanAlaska Uranium;  Craig Parry of Isonergy COSA Resources.*

Finally, with gold now back to $2,000 an ounce, and silver and platinum rebounding, I tend to our bruised and obscure miner-explorer-roy-co choices in the sub-$200 million market value category. We all know what they are by now.  

[An aside: our producers are faring well, or at least holding their own, led by Alamos Gold AGI.] 

Among TCR‘s abandoned stocks, if pressed to name a couple with looming events — ones that if their values were to sink even lower than they already are, we would lose them forever into a Hades of squid-black ink: Azimut Exploration AZM AZMTF (Elmer gold project resource in Québec before year-end); Xtra-Gold Resources XTG XTGRF (never-diluting, and on the cusp of expanded resource estimate for its Kibi gold project in Ghana). 

Please see earlier “Redemption” reports from this month for tags and barrel-bottom reasoning re: 

— Banyan Gold BYN;

— Newcore Gold NCAU;

— and hardest hit of all, both C3 Metals CCCM and Orford Mining ORM ORMFF; three others.