Dear MMTA Members,
Welcome to your February-March edition of the MMTA magazine, the Crucible. After the Lunar New Year holidays in February, that are already feeling like a lifetime ago, we are firmly in the Year of the Dragon — and may this year bring you the wisdom, good fortune and prosperity it embodies. And if you celebrate at the end of this month, Happy Easter!
Fasten your seatbelts
Nobody can say that this dragon year had a gentle take-off.
With the new fiscal year soon upon us, and US and UK elections looming, there is more geopolitical turbulence ahead. Fasten your seatbelts, and get ready for the MMTA International Minor Metals Conference in Singapore next month to bring you insights into how all this will affect metal markets.
Continuing on last month’s theme, we delve into minor metal adjacent products affecting battery chemistries, and in turn
their raw materials, with Fastmarkets focusing in this issue on iron phosphate for LFP. Our legal expert members Pennington Manches Cooper kindly share with MMTA their update on the latest UK and EU Russia sanctions and
guidelines. Also in this issue we bring you our partner association CRM Alliance’s briefing on critical raw materials and
chemicals regulation policies and consultations brewing up at the European Commission.
Linking up supply chains
March started with the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual convention in Toronto,
Canada, the leading global mining event.
This became the meeting ground for the principals of the transnational Mineral Security Partnership (MSP). Here, Estonia became its newest member, joining 13 other countries spanning North America, a number of European nations including the UK and Norway, plus Australia, South Korea and Japan. Do not underestimate Estonia, a rare gem in the EU crown as a processor of rare earths and the Union’s leading digital economy.
At the meeting MSP partners confirmed their commitment to 23 projects across their countries set to contribute to critical mineral supply chains and energy transition, with high ESG standards.
This partnership does not preclude members building links on their own. The UK this year attended its first meetings of
the CPTPP trade bloc since signing up to it last year and now has a free trade agreement with Australia. Everyone from
North America through the UK and the EU to East Asia is courting the Central Asian natural resources powerhouse
Kazakhstan, home to uranium, copper, chrome, rare metals and rare earths resources. Recognising its need to “friendshore” the raw materials it can’t source internally, the EU continues to build its Global Gateway network of allies, and in
February signed a memorandum of understanding with Rwanda to develop a joint strategy on sustainable value
chains. This includes increased due diligence and traceability, co-operation in fighting against illegal trafficking of raw materials and alignment with international ESG standard. The agreement comes after a period of renewed political friction between Rwanda and its larger, mineral rich neighbour the Democratic Republic of Congo over insecurity in DRC’s mining
areas close to its eastern borders and continued reports of smuggling of DRC minerals through neighbouring Rwanda.
Eyes on security
At government level, critical raw material awareness has turned a corner— security of supply chains is now recognised
as part of national security. Attacks on commercial vessels that disrupted Suez Canal shipping hit home.
We touched last month on the UK’s Critical Imports and Supply Chain strategy, the UK’s umpteenth CRM strategy, but delving into it largely brings up a recognition that the UK cannot build secure supply chains on its own — there is a large focus on removing trade barriers. Notable is a recognition that the government needs to analyse the risk of and be prepared for supply chain shocks. e.g. to stockpile goods if it loses access to them and directly intervene in markets. The Ministry of Defence has put in place a £2 mln Supply Chain Contingency Fund for emergency procurement.
And the Spring budget saw UK invest again in offshore wind and nuclear (both large projects and to open up procurement for small modular reactions), framing it in the language of national energy “security”.
In March the EU launched it first European Defence Industrial Strategy. No fireworks, but it is underpinned by €1.5 bn industry programme focused on internal defence procurement, with 50% of it by 2030 and 60% by 2035 to come from the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB). If you are in that supply chain, watch this space.
