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  • Che's Motorcycle@lemmygrad.ml
    11·
    3 days ago

    Some real gems here, even in just the first section of the article.

    For the past few years, the West has been trying to break China’s grip on minerals that are critical for defense and green technologies. Despite their efforts, Chinese companies are becoming more dominant, not less.

    They are expanding operations, supercharging supply and causing prices to drop. Their challengers can’t compete. “China is not just standing still waiting for us to catch up,” said Morgan Bazilian, director of the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines. “They are making investments on top of their already massive investments in all aspects of the critical-minerals supply chain.”

    Take nickel, which is needed for electric-vehicle batteries. Chinese processing plants that dot the Indonesian archipelago are pumping out vast quantities of the mineral from new and expanding facilities, jolting the market.

    Meanwhile, Switzerland-based mining giant Glencore is suspending operations at its nickel plant in New Caledonia, a French territory, concluding it can’t survive despite offers of financial help from Paris. [Eat shit, Macron.] The U.K.’s Horizonte Minerals, whose new Brazilian mine was expected to become a major Western source, said last month that investors had bailed, citing oversupply in the market.

    At least four nickel mines in Western Australia are winding down. Lithium projects in the U.S. and Australia have been postponed or suspended after a surge in Chinese production at home and in sub-Saharan Africa.

    The only dedicated cobalt mine in the U.S. also suspended operations last year, five months after local dignitaries attended its opening ceremony. Its owners say they are struggling against a flood of Chinese-produced cobalt from Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    Last year, non-Chinese production of refined cobalt declined to its lowest level in 15 years, according to Darton Commodities. The share of lithium mining done within China or by Chinese companies abroad has grown from 14% in 2018 to 35% this year, according to Fastmarkets, a commodities information provider. Over the same time, lithium processing done within China has risen from 63% in 2018 to 70%, according to Fastmarkets.

    The breakneck expansion has assailed Western producers, who say China’s domestic economy can’t always absorb the flood of minerals its firms bring to market. Slower-than-expected electric-car sales growth in China last year meant there were fewer takers for China’s mineral surge, contributing to the crash in global prices.

    What’s more worrying for Western producers is that there is little sign of a letup. “It’s just the way China does things. They have tended to build more capacity whether it’s in aluminum, or cement, or nickel,” said William Adams, head of base metals research for Fastmarkets. Chinese companies “all gun for market share, and the consequence for that is you get oversupply.”

    Western officials, too, are sounding the alarm. In response to a question last month about China’s dominance in nickel, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the market had been flooded, making businesses in free-market democracies uneconomic.

    “It is our belief that that behavior can be intentional, can be happening with the purpose of driving companies in our country, in those of our allies, out of business,” she said. Freeland didn’t provide further details or any evidence for the claim.