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Charles Pitts is the publisher of Skillings Mining Review, the trade journal that has covered mining since 1912. He writes on the macro forces behind metal prices: commodity cycles, sovereign capital and the shifting sources of demand. His current work argues that hyperscale AI, and the gigawatt-scale power its data centres need, is becoming a buyer of lithium and copper in its own right, competing with the automotive supply chain for tier-one reserves.
Representative view of the Northwestern Ontario mining region. Generation Mining has secured $340 million in final funding for its 100%-owned Marathon copper-palladium project in Northwestern Ontario,…
Rare earth separation and refining equipment at an industrial processing facility. The critical minerals supply chain is becoming less constrained by geology than by chemistry. New…
The Rae project covers a remote copper exploration district in Nunavut, Canada. Hancock Prospecting has agreed to invest about A$8.77 million in White Cliff Minerals, taking…
The U.S. Department of War is committing $450 million to The Elmet Group and has awarded its subsidiary a separate contract worth up to $2 billion…
Construction activity begins at USA Rare Earth’s planned rare-earth metal and magnet manufacturing complex in Blacksburg, South Carolina. USA Rare Earth has broken ground on a…
An ROV operates over a field of polymetallic nodules on the deep-ocean floor. Byline: Penny Langford The United States is turning a dormant deep-sea mining framework…
Industrial facilities are central to the U.S. effort to rebuild a secure tungsten supply chain. PORTLAND, Maine : The U.S. government has committed up to $2…
Silver’s 2026 outlook is being shaped by a sharp contradiction: solar installations continue to expand, but the amount of silver used in each panel is falling.…
The completed combination of G Mining Ventures and G2 Goldfields has created a new reference point for mining M&A: a headline transaction worth approximately C$3 billion,…
Gold mining’s cost base has moved beyond a threshold that once marked the upper end of the industry’s normal range. Global average all-in sustaining costs (AISC)…
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