Beijing’s new restrictions on rare-earth materials ignited a political and economic firestorm. But the latest trade rift generated a surprising upshot: an American company jumping into the rare earths mining business. Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF), the Ohio-based steel company, is already exploring the excavation of rare-earth material and has identified two promising sites, the company announced on Monday. Investors scrambled to get in on the resource play, sending shares up by more than 20%. The sudden excitement over mining is something that we’ve heard before — only this time it’s literally mining. Simply gesturing toward a pivot amid a charged moment is…
Author: TJ Markle
Standing atop Nipissing Hill Lookout, the history of the surrounding town of Cobalt, Ont. is in full view. There’s the town itself, Cobalt Lake and the decades-old remains of legacy mine infrastructure such as headframes and wooden mills. Look further out and squint, and on a sunny day a set of distant squares of solar panels reflect back bright white light. The tranquil streets and dusty old mining buildings of Cobalt might make it hard to believe that this community – where less than 1,000 people live – once hosted one of the three great silver rushes of the Americas.…
Orion Resource Partners LP (“Orion”), a leading global investment firm specializing in metals and materials, today announces the formation of the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium (“Orion CMC” or the “Consortium”). Orion CMC is a new, mission-driven consortium designed to support the United States and its allied and partner nations to develop secure, responsible, and resilient supply chains for the critical minerals that underpin future economic growth and security. Led by Orion, and in partnership with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (“DFC”), the Consortium intends to bring together some of the world’s leading metals and mining investors and operators, creating a…
MELBOURNE (Reuters) -The U.S. and China are battling to project power as they compete to secure critical minerals supply, the new chair of BHP said on Thursday, downplaying any potential for the global miner to be caught between its top customer and the world’s biggest economy. “You’ve got two very, very powerful nations just flexing their muscles,” Ross McEwan told reporters after BHP’s annual general meeting in Melbourne. “It’s not the first time this has happened.” He said “critical minerals are becoming a vital thing,” adding, “And I think a business like ours and a country like ours actually just needs to…
The moon is about to become the first extraterrestrial mining frontier, and most investors may be backing the wrong players. While venture capital pours into space startups promising to revolutionize lunar resource extraction, the real winners may well be companies that have spent 150 years turning rock into revenue: Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore and their peers. As CEO of Forbes-Space, a mission partnership and growth services agency working with space companies globally, I’ve advised both emerging space ventures and established industrial players on space market entry strategies. A mining executive asked me last month whether his company should invest in…
Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Strategic Mining Transformation Saudi Arabia’s mining sector represents one of the most ambitious industrial transformation projects in the modern era. The Kingdom’s departure from traditional oil dependency toward mineral diversification reflects a calculated strategy that positions the nation as a future global mining powerhouse. This Saudi mining expansion builds upon foundations established well before Vision 2030, with infrastructure development beginning as early as 2009-2010 when the groundwork for phosphate operations, aluminum facilities, ports, and railways was first established. The scale of this transformation becomes evident through Maaden’s remarkable financial turnaround. The company’s net debt to EBITDA ratio plummeted from 8x…
From Concert Halls to Commodity Markets: Russian Maestro Igor Raykhelson has just orchestrated his biggest deal. The acclaimed composer has been awarded a “Golden License” from the Bahrain sovereign wealth fund, to build the first titanium processing plant in the Middle East, to help the United States supplant its supply chain of titanium from adversaries, with a new supply chain from allies, like Bahrain – which has free-trade status with America and 23 other markets around the world. Raykhelson said that Bahrain was a clear destination of choice given its free-trade agreement with the U.S., strategic location, and competitive operating…
Let’s talk about the Moon! A new study suggests that the Moon could be way more valuable than what we think. Researchers believe that on its surface there are craters that contain precious platinum-group metals such as platinum, palladium, and rhodium; apart from water trapped in minerals. If this is confirmed, the Moon would become one of the richest places when it comes to resources in the solar system, which are crucial for Earth and space exploration. So, let’s learn more about this study. How much platinum and water could the Moon have? The figures that researchers estimate are very surprising, so let’s…
Drive an hour south of Kumasi, Ghana’s bustling second city, and before long the dense jungle gives way to denuded hills peppered with rickety timber frames. On every slope, gumbooted workers shovel the tawny earth down to muddy pools in the furrows, from whence the sludge is pumped to the frame’s zenith to gush down a shallow ramp lined with webbed plastic matting. At the base, more workers sweep the outflow with metal detectors. Several times a day, the incessant din of diesel engines pauses while the mats are delicately removed and placed in outsize tubs for washing. It’s only…
At the end of the third quarter the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners had a combined market capitalization of just under $1.97 trillion, up nearly $700 billion so far in 2025 with most of the gains accumulated in the third quarter. The total stock market valuation of the world’s biggest mining companies has finally surpassed the previous record high reached more than three years ago and in the process transformed the ranking of the upper echelons. Trends in the global mining industry that have been documented in these pages for more than a decade have finally broken…