Industry Thoughts: Entering The Transition Economy - Ontario Mining 2022

Industry Thoughts:

Entering the Transition Economy

“Nickel demand is up 15%+ driven by a combination of demand from the EV sector growing by more than 100% and demand from stainless steel growing by more than 10%. We believe this demand growth is leading to the largest nickel market deficit ever and the emergence of a nickel supercycle by the middle of this decade.“

Mark Selby, Chairman and CEO, Canada Nickel Company

“Copper is critical to every aspect of sustainability moving beyond fossil fuels, and the electrification of industry, from baseload electricity generation, to transmission in copper lines, to battery storage needed in computer server farms and wind turbines, to consumer products ranging from electric vehicles to cell phones. The challenge, however, is in recognizing that the rate of discovery and project development in the global copper industry has lagged the rising demand for copper for decades.”

Michael Gunning, President & CEO, VR Resources

“Cesium is one of those metals that hardly anyone knows about, but it is really found in everything. It is used as a lubricant on all the offshore drilling, and drilling companies look for it regularly. In fact, it is so rare that they rent the cesium for the lubricant and have to give it back when they are done. It is also used in detection systems, a lot of high-tech missile defense systems, GPS locators, special optical glass, and it is such a rare metal, that if you find it, you are noticed. When we found this exceptionally high-grade cesium area on our property, with over 14% cesium in our drill core, companies were contacting us immediately. There is currently no production of cesium anywhere in the world.”

Johnathan More, Chairman, Power Metals Corp.

“Spodumene is lithium silicate, and in its pure form, it contains around 8% lithium oxide. It is the main mineral we look for in hardrock lithium deposits and it can be easily converted to lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. Spodumene can be visually identified before we even drill and in our area lithium oxide typically averages 1-1.5% in the dykes that make up our deposit.

J.C. St-Amour, President, Imagine Lithium Inc. (formerly Infinite Ore Corp.)

“People still leave the tap on when they are brushing their teeth. Reduce the length of your shower and install water efficient shower heads. Turn lights off when you leave a room. Reduce the temperature on the thermostat a couple of degrees and put a sweater on instead – do you really need to be wearing a t-shirt in your house in Northern Ontario when it’s -30°C outside?"

Mary-Jane Piggott, North America Regional Manager of Mining Environmental Group, Klohn Crippen Berger

"This is an evolution of the Industrial Revolution of the 1900s.The skill-sets may be different but the problem-solving, analytic thought-process is the same. A culture of strategic Change Management implementation is imperative and we must build technology solutions to achieve business and operational goals. The industry in planning not only for broad-scale BEVs, but for the next generation into Hydrogen."

Ben Sharpe, Senior Industry Consultant: Mining, Metals, Cement & Aggregate, Rockwell Automation

“The shortages in the medium to long term in the battery supply chain are not due to the lack of mining as much as to the lack of knowledge of converting lithium product or lithium oxide to lithium carbonates or lithium hydroxide, which are used in cathode production for batteries. We are hoping to introduce this knowledge to Europe."

Dirk Harbecke, Chairman, RockTech Lithium

"North America is a long way behind what it could be in terms of exploration, development, and eventually production. The Chinese seem to have a very firm grip on lithium production. However, Tesla has already bought into a mine in Nevada, something you normally do not see. As all major manufacturers are here in Ontario, this will be the place to be developing new lithium deposits."

Harry Barr, Chairman and CEO, New Age Metals

Image courtesy of Red Pine Exploration

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The Battery Material Supply Chain