Mining’s changing ESG landscape

Frik Els | June 9, 2023 | 

Grasberg copper-gold mine Papua province, Indonesia (Image: NASA)

MINING.COM sat down in May with Dean Slocum, founder of Acorn International and Chris Anderson, a strategic partner at the Houston-headquartered consulting firm.


Slocum and Anderson offer ESG risk management advice for the extractive and industrial sectors around the world with dozens of projects that range from off-shore pipelines in Angola, bauxite mines in Brazil and gas infrastructure in Kazakhstan to gold mines in West Africa, to an oil company in India and offshore wind in the US.

 

Dean Slocum, founder and principal of Acorn International. Submitted.

Acorn’s work includes due diligence, capacity building, environmental and social studies and stakeholder engagement including through in-country partnerships and a network of experts.
Emblematic Grasberg

Slocum, who has 30 years of experience in social, environmental and integrated hazard identification assessments (IHAZID), was due to depart for Grasberg, the iconic Indonesian copper and gold mine, and that’s where the conversation started.

Grasberg, operated by Freeport McMoRan in the mountains of West Papua, has been in operation since the 1960s and some 25,000 workers are on site.

The mine is in an area where separatist groups have long campaigned for the independence of the province and sporadic violence takes place to this day. Grasberg has other challenges, including, to put it mildly, difficult terrain, remoteness, seismic activity, very high rainfall, and tailings issues.

Slocum says a complex operation like Grasberg is emblematic of the work Acorn does around the world:

“Operationally Grasberg is a very successful mine. Engineering and financial risks can be managed – it’s the societal risk, the community risks that are trickier to handle, but they’re not impossible, right?

“That’s Acorn’s business – applying the same kind of rigor with social science to these issues. It can be done reliably.”
Changing guard

Slocum says the mining industry is undergoing a changing of the guard and “the new guard gets it.” There is now an understanding that “We’re not going to be in business if we don’t do things that are the way of the host communities.”

Anderson, who has worked as a communities and social performance practitioner in the mining industry for 17 years with, among others, Rio Tinto and Newmont, is forthright about how the makeup of the industry has changed.

Chris Anderson, strategic partner Acorn International. Image from Acorn.

“When I joined Newmont 20 odd years ago and when I would be in an executive committee meeting or even a board meeting, I’d look around the room and there would – I have to be really frank here – they were all old, white fat men and you knew whether they were Americans or Brits or Australians or South Africans or Canadians. They were all from the same mold.

“Today when I go into a meeting like that, more than half are women. I think it’s a major change marker and it’s something that’s pushing a different approach at the very highest level.”
Not the money

Anderson acknowledges some problems with the notion of ESG but takes issue with critiques, often from the right, that it is simply a woke concept and that it’s a “warm and fuzzy” issue:

“It’s not warm and fuzzy – it’s a business imperative. As an anthropologist, it’s the S that stands out for me. One of the misunderstandings that is so widespread within the industry, but also within governments is that this is really just about how much more you pay – whether it’s in the form of building hospitals and schools, or royalties and so on.

“The space between a community and its stakeholders is a critical one that has to be managed well, but one of the last things it’s about, is spending money.”
Juukan Gorge

In 2020, Rio Tinto destroyed caves at Juukan Gorge in West Australia that showed evidence of human habitation stretching back into the last ice age to make way for iron ore diggings. The blowback led to a clean out of senior management at the world’s number two miner.

Acorn recently completed a project for an undisclosed global mining company (not Rio) to roll out a heritage management system at all of its mines.

“I think a lot of mining companies were gunning for Rio – I can’t believe they did that! And then they go back to their operations meetings and say, you know what, that could happen to us,” says Slocum.

“THE SPACE BETWEEN A COMMUNITY AND ITS STAKEHOLDERS IS A CRITICAL ONE THAT HAS TO BE MANAGED WELL, BUT ONE OF THE LAST THINGS IT’S ABOUT, IS SPENDING MONEY.”

Rio was aware of the significance of Juukan Gorge, but says Slocum, “you have to go beyond awareness and understanding of heritage in the places you mine and make sure that you have the organizational structure in communication and resiliency to make decisions about these issues. “

Anderson believes with issues like these there is once again a generational shift: “I started working mining in Australia and as an anthropologist who’d spent years working with Aboriginal people, I speak two Aboriginal languages. In the early 90s, the [attitude] was if we saw an unusual rock formation, let’s just bulldoze it and not tell anyone about it, let’s just do it before it becomes a problem and look the other way.”

“But of course, nowadays the scrutiny with social media and the dramatic take up in Indigenous communities worldwide of cell phones has meant that nothing a mining company does is out of reach and observation anymore. [The concept of] cultural heritage has moved beyond stone axes and rock painting to intangibles like local languages and communities’ cultural lives.”

Slocum says ironically, the Rio incident may actually cause some real positive developments by putting a spotlight on these issues.
Banks and shareholders

To the question whether much of the talk around ESG in mining amounts to little more than lip service as opposed to evidence of fundamental change within the industry, Slocum is ambivalent:

“There are some things that are happening that are forcing companies to do more of this. The GISTM (Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management), the Copper Mark, ASI (Aluminum Stewardship Initiative) are all initiatives forcing companies to do gap assessments to join the club, get the certification or the financing.”

“But is that a fundamental shift coming? I guess I would say the jury’s out on that. But I think it’s more than surficial.

“It’s probably not so much things like the Copper Mark, and it’s certainly not regulatory driven, but the lenders are really, really pushing some very meaningful change. [Lenders and shareholders] are saying it has to be sustainable because they’re going to follow up on it and say, well, we’re pulling our money out. And we’ve seen that in Brazil at a project we’re on right now.”

Anderson says it is significant – and somewhat surprising – that banks’ involvement in mining has evolved to the point where institutions “pull their money out because the project hadn’t achieved free, prior and informed consent from the Indigenous people. That’s happening right now.”

Dean Slocum at Grasberg, Indonesia.

China in Africa

The role of Chinese investment in mining, specifically in Africa, has come under the spotlight in places like Congo and elsewhere. The DRC, for instance, has embarked on a program of revisiting and rewriting mining deals in the country made by Chinese companies, in one instance leading to the suspension of export licences for the massive copper and cobalt mine Tenke Fungurume.

While Western companies are heavily scrutinized and under pressure from their own shareholders and outside activist groups, the perception is that Chinese investors get away with environmental, safety and other breaches.

Slocum believes while some of it is overemphasized, much of the flak Chinese companies are getting is earned.

“It’s not across the board, but we have seen on the ground communities in Africa that have experienced kind of disproportionate and unnecessary environmental impacts from Chinese projects and there are also significantly lower employment of locals because companies use Chinese contractors and labour,” says Slocum.

Anderson adds, “doing things by the book is delusional because the book is still being written and the fact that you follow the law is almost never sufficient in the S area of ESG.”

“I remember an African politician saying, well, you guys come and you invest your money, but you have all these strings and you say you gotta do this. And we gotta do that. The Chinese just come and give us the money and then they get the contract and they do the work, but I think a lot of African countries are regretting their open arms to China, which meant unfettered activity at the local level.”
Artisanal miners

The DRC is in many ways the nexus for mining and ESG and another issue that the industry has to deal with – and has not dealt with very successfully so far – is artisanal mining. Just the term itself is contentious – small scale mining may be a better description. Or simply illegal mining.

Anderson, who is past chair of the International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples Working Group, says there’s a discourse that casts small scale miners as “romantic heroes” as if they are “up against the big miners who are stealing all the ground that they could normally make a living from.

He says that in West Africa, where he worked extensively as Newmont’s external affairs director, in countries like Guinea, Liberia, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, small-scale mining is organized crime and in most cases, it’s not even locals that are involved.

“In many cases, they’re roving gangs and it’s increasingly done with Chinese money, and even Chinese nationals themselves are involved in these activities.”

In places like Ghana, where Anderson lived for six years, there is a growing realization by the government and citizens that illegal miners have contaminated just about all the waterways in the country for their own criminal activity.

I think it’s estimated that something like 30% of Ghana’s gold production annually leaves the country without any taxes or royalties because it’s done through small-scale and mostly illegal mining.”

Even when official channels are used, small scale mining is ripe for abuse. A 25-year deal published last week by the DRC that hands a little-known UAE firm exclusive rights to export artisanal gold at preferential rates raised eyebrows.

On the opposite side, the formal mining companies complain that small-scale miners infringe on their concessions, and they get blamed for pollution and other issues like influx of crime and other illicit activities around these mines.

Chris Anderson in Suriname with artisanal miners. Submitted image.

“Big companies often refuse to deal with it because they say, look, this isn’t our country it’s up to the government to do. And the ICMM tried valiantly about 10 years ago to bring together small miners and large miners, and there was a guidance note produced which I was involved in.

“But basically, most big miners haven’t realized how to deal with it, and I’m not sure anybody has fully, except to have the government send the military in and burn all the equipment and to jail the people and so on.

“African countries have to ask ‘do we want large scale anarchy as we can see in eastern DRC, or do we want a well-regulated investment with big miners wherever they come from, who knows what they’re doing in terms of environment management and the community’?”

Slocum thinks the Glencores of the world that are willing to go into an environment like that will apply consistent standards anywhere they work, depending on local conditions of course.

“But It takes a lot of probably hard gut checks to decide – is this what we want and if we’re in the country already do we want to stay there?”

Greenwashing

The exponential growth needed in mining as a result of booming demand during the energy transition will inevitably bring greater awareness of the industry among the broader public.

Mining is a tiny industry compared to global oil and gas – Saudi Aramco has a larger market capitalization than the 100 biggest mining companies in the world. But thanks to electric cars mining is stepping out of Big Oil’s shadow and the vast NGO and environmental protesters complex is taking notice. Is Big Mining ready?

Slocum says Acorn International is working with Rio Tinto and others in Guinea following a series of community complaints against Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) in which Rio Tinto and Alcoa have a majority share and the state has 49%. The complaints have reached the ombudsman of the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) for mediation.

“They are hesitant, as are many, to make their case known better because they’re going to be seen as greenwashing or white washing.”

THEY ARE HESITANT, AS ARE MANY, TO MAKE THEIR CASE KNOWN BETTER BECAUSE THEY’RE GOING TO BE SEEN AS GREENWASHING OR WHITE WASHING.

Slocum believes the NGOs and lawyers acting on behalf of the community are casting them as the big bad company and instead of embarking on a charm offensive about the good that they are doing in the community, the miners “are just by putting the facts out there – the good and the bad.

“I think it’s a guarded industry and that’s good. In the past there’s been too much whitewashing and greenwashing, and I think there’s a feeling now like we don’t want to get too far out ahead of that. But they are catching a lot of flak as a result.”

“These NGOs, they’re smart, they’re going after the money chain. So now it’s the car companies that are putting pressure on miners,” says Slocum.

Anderson says in his experience in the developing world it’s the other way around: “The nationalized mining companies are the ones that drive over the locals, especially when they’re of a different culture or a marginalized group of people.”
Going mainstream

The Guinea bauxite story reached the mainstream media in the US, with the Washington Post running a major feature on it last month. You can also read about cobalt mining in Vanity Fair (“too dirty even for Elon Musk”) and iron ore mines in the New Yorker, and car companies getting into mining per NPR as publications search for a new blood diamond narrative.

Miners seem unable to counter these narratives effectively:

“And the David vs Goliath story may be a hackneyed one, but it’s also what the public kind of buy into. Look at these big corporations – they’ll do anything for profit and run over the little guy,” Anderson says.

And, says Anderson, the David vs Goliath angle is also a cop-out by journalists because rather than dipping into the facts journalists prefer to pre-empt “any accusation that they are paid off by the company if you say anything good about them.”

Anderson believes mining is in some ways unfairly picked on, “because we dig big holes in the ground.

THE DAVID VS GOLIATH STORY MAY BE A HACKNEYED ONE, BUT IT’S ALSO WHAT THE PUBLIC KIND OF BUY INTO.

“That said, there is also an internal industry problem. Mining is a technical discipline and mining people are not very good at communicating with the outside world.”
Mining everywhere

Recently Anderson, who is also research associate at the Colorado School of Mines, was speaking at the University of Denver in the School of Theology “of all things”, and about 40 students, some of whom were older, “ended up having an amazing debate about mining.”

“When I talk to this sort of crowd, I would say look around the room – every single thing that’s not wood came out of a mine. Everything. So we don’t even have to just look at critical minerals. We cannot live the way we live without mining.”

While making the case for mining being essential to daily life is not difficult, Anderson does not believe this is the message to take to the public. The approach should be more localised:

“But that’s not to say we need to talk about it more. You need transparency where you develop ways so that stakeholders – not talking about shareholders here – can see for themselves how they will benefit and become advocates themselves.

“In many parts of the rural and remote areas of the developing world, mining is the only chance for any economic investment that’s going to lift people out of poverty.”

NGO-industrial complex

The role of NGOs, a vast sprawling network of often well-funded activist organisations, in mining is only growing and in downtown Vancouver, where hundreds of junior miners maintain offices (or at least addresses) encountering the odd protest, especially during warmer weather is not infrequent.

One such event MINING.COM saw featured two community members from an early stage project in Mexico flown into Vancouver by a New York-based NGO to hold banners and bang drums outside the developer’s offices.

The scene outside the office was in stark contrast to video and images shared by the company showing one of several townhalls attended by 3,000 people from the local community where broad support for the project was given.

“I’ve seen it myself many times, especially in my years at the corporate office in Newmont, where we’d have an AGM that was open to anybody, not just shareholders – and the NGOs would bring one or two people from the areas where we worked, who would spin this narrative about death and destruction.

But even in this arena, Anderson sees positive changes and a future that may be less antagonistic than before.

THERE’S A GROWING REALIZATION THAT IT’S PROBABLY ONLY 10% OR 15% OF THE NGO WORLD THAT ARE ACTIVISTS

“I worked for Newmont CEO, Wayne Murdy, and in my first few months he agreed to go to Toronto to take part in the mining and minerals for sustainable development event, which marked the beginning of the International Council of Mining and Metals and brought together CEOs of all the major mining companies and senior staff with all the major NGOs.

“I tried to organize a meeting between Murdy and some of these NGOs, and almost none of them would. They didn’t want to hear any story that went up against their prejudices.

“These days, several of those people and one of the leading lights in the mining critique business 20 years ago are now working for an NGO that’s incredibly constructive. Tough critics, but working towards a joint aim with mining companies. The most recent example that we’ve worked hard on is free, prior and informed consent for Indigenous peoples in Suriname where an NGO organized an independent group to facilitate the FPIC process.”

“That kind of partnership is getting more and more common, but [some of the reluctance] also comes from miners who say ‘I’m not going to deal with an NGO. They don’t like us. They lie.’ You know, they’re disingenuous and we still see examples,” says Anderson, referring to the Guinea mediation Acorn is involved in where one of the NGOs openly admitted that “the reason they didn’t want to go along with solutions was that it would stop their funding.”

But, says Anderson, mining companies are becoming less averse to working with NGOs and there’s a growing realization that “it’s probably only 10% or 15% of the NGO world that are activists” and the rest of them are focused on genuine advocacy and development help for poor communities.

US mining resolutions

As for the megatrends of the moment – the green energy transition and electric cars – how will that affect the broader mining industry?

“I was a carmaker, I’d be very worried about the supply chain right now. One of the interesting bellwethers of the trend is going to how the Biden administration approaches things like the Resolution Copper, a project which is in the top three worldwide unexploited copper deposits right here in our backyard.”

Discovered in 1995, the Resolution deposit in Arizona contains over 10m tonnes of copper and from an environmental Resolution ticks the boxes: It’s an underground high-grade mine using the latest block-cave technology that shrinks its environmental footprint.

The world’s number one and two mining companies, BHP and Rio Tinto, have already spent $2 billion on Resolution, including reclamation of a historical mine. It was a pet project of late senator McCain and Resolution had the backing of both Obama and Trump.

IF I WAS A CARMAKER, I’D BE VERY WORRIED ABOUT THE SUPPLY CHAIN RIGHT NOW.

But Biden (temporarily) blocked it early on in his administration and just last month the timeline for approval was again up in the air after the US Forest Service said it does not know when it could produce its review, which is crucial to a land swap with Native Americans on the site of the proposed mine.
Three things

“In the 40 years I’ve worked with Indigenous peoples I have never met an Indigenous person that’s against mining. They want economic development because almost always they’re marginalized by mainstream economies.

But there are three criteria that have to be met:

“If they’re going to support you, one is that they have a say in the decisions about the project that affects them. Secondly, that the environmental and cultural aspects are looked after and respected and that doesn’t mean to say that there’s not a room for compromise. But thirdly, that they and their descendants benefit financially from it.

“If those three conditions are met, you’ve got very strong supporters there in whatever stakeholder the Indigenous people belong to.

“And I think a lot of mining companies haven’t really twigged to the fact that you can get very strong local support if you bring them in on significant decision making.”

 

New Evidence Solidifies Oman’s Role As Major Copper Provider During Bronze Age

Scrap Monster - Mon Jun 12, 2023

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): A tip from locals in Ibra, Oman, led German archaeologists to discover a rare lump of copper dating from the Early Bronze Age (about 2600-2000 BC).

The lump, weighing 1.7 kilograms, was corroded on the outside and consisted of three individual ingots in the shape of a round cone.

According to the researchers, during that period, the territory of present-day Oman was one of the most important producers of copper for ancient Mesopotamia – in modern-day Iraq -, as well as for the Indus culture in what is now Pakistan and India. It was only there that copper ore occurred on a larger scale.

Casted into ingots, the red metal was a coveted commodity, as documented by cuneiform texts from Mesopotamia.

Since copper ingots were usually further processed to make tools and other objects, they are only rarely unearthed in archaeological excavations. All the more surprising was the discovery of several such ingots in Ibra’s Early Bronze Age settlement.

The copper ingots have a plano-convex shape typical for the period, which was formed by pouring the molten metal into small clay crucibles. Through the discovery of the copper ingots, it is possible to learn more about the role of Oman in interregional trade relations during the Early Bronze Age, as well as about the metal processing technologies already known at that time.

Smelting copper requires a lot of combustible material, which was likely to have been a major challenge in a region as arid and low in vegetation as Oman. How people in the Early Bronze Age handled their limited resources and whether it was possible for them to use these sustainably are questions to be answered in the further course of the project.

Several pottery sherds of ‘black-slipped jars,’ large storage vessels of the Indus culture that were also dug up there, also corroborate that the newly discovered village was in close exchange and contact with the Indian subcontinent.

All combined, the discoveries seem to signal that even a small, rather rural settlement in Central Oman was part of a system of interregional trade and exchange of goods.

Courtesy: www.mining,com

ICYMI

The Problems with Coal Ash Start Smaller Than Anyone Thought

How well toxic elements leach out of coal ash depends on the ash's nanoscale composition

June 8, 2023

Leftover sludge from the 2008 coal ash spill at the Kingston TVA power plant. New research indicates that the nanoscale structure of the coal ash plays a large part in whether or not toxic chemicals can leach into the environment from such events.

Everyone knows that burning coal causes air pollution that is harmful to the climate and human health. But the ash left over can often be harmful as well.

For example, Duke Energy long stored a liquified form of coal ash in 36 large ponds across the Carolinas. That all changed in 2014, when a spill at its Dan River site released 27 million gallons of ash pond water into the local environment. The incident raised concerns about the dangers associated with even trace amounts of toxic elements like arsenic and selenium in the ash. Little was known, however, about just how much of these hazardous materials were present in the ash water or how easily they could contaminate the surrounding environment.

Fears of future spills and seepage caused Duke Energy to agree to pay $1.1 billion to decommission most of its coal ash ponds over the coming years. Meanwhile, researchers are working on better ways of putting the ash to use, such as recycling it to recover valuable rare earth elements or incorporating it into building materials such as concrete. But to put any potential solution into action, researchers still must know which sources of coal ash pose a hazardous risk due to its chemical makeup — a question that scientists still struggle to answer.

In a new paper published June 6 in the journal Environmental Science: Nano, researchers at Duke University have discovered that these answers may remain elusive because nobody is thinking small enough. Using one of the newest, most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world — the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory — the authors show that, at least for selenium and arsenic, the amount of toxic elements able to escape from coal ash depends largely on their nanoscale structures.

enlarge

A nanoscale view of two different sources of coal ash shows major differences

 in how arsenic is part of its makeup. On the left, arsenic atoms (red) coat the 

surface of a coal ash particle made mainly of iron (green). 

On the right, the arsenic is encapsulated within the iron particle, making it 

more difficult for the arsenic to escape.

“These results show just how complex coal ash is as a material,” said Helen Hsu-Kim, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University. “For example, we saw arsenic and selenium either attached to the surface of fine grain particles or encapsulated within them, which explains why these elements leach out of some coal ash sources more readily than others.”

It’s long been known that factors in the surrounding environment such as pH affect how well toxic elements can move from source to surroundings. In previous research, Hsu-Kim showed that the amount of oxygen in a toxin’s surroundings can greatly affect its chemistry, and that different sources of coal ash produce vastly different levels of byproducts.

“Brookhaven’s capabilities were able to provide the researchers a nanoscale map of each particle along with the distribution of elements in each particle.”

Roxboro Power Station situated on the shore of Hyco Lake. The coal ash ponds are somewhere behind the tree line. 

But just because one source of coal ash is high in arsenic doesn’t necessarily mean that high amounts of arsenic will leach out of it. Similarly, various sources of ash respond differently to the same environmental conditions. The problem is complex, to say the least. To take a different approach, Hsu-Kim decided to take an even closer look at the source itself.

“Researchers in the field typically use x-ray microscopy with a resolution of one or two micrometers, which is about the same size as the fly ash particles themselves,” Hsu-Kim said. “So if a single particle is a single pixel, you’re not seeing how the elements are distributed across it.”

To shrink these pictures’ pixels to the nanoscale, Hsu-Kim turned to Catherine Peters, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, and her colleagues to acquire time on the National Synchrotron Light Source II. The futuristic machine creates light beams 10 billion times brighter than the sun to reveal the chemical and atomic structure of materials using light beams ranging from infrared to hard X-rays.

Brookhaven’s capabilities were able to provide the researchers a nanoscale map of each particle along with the distribution of elements in each particle. The incredible resolution revealed that coal ash is a compilation of particles of all kinds and sizes.

“It was almost like we saw something different in every sample we looked at,” Hsu-Kim said. “The wide array of differences really highlights why the main characteristic that we care about — how much of these elements leach out of the ash — varies so much between different samples.”

While nobody can say for sure what causes the coal ash to develop its unique composition, Hsu-Kim guesses that it is likely mostly related to how the coal was originally formed millions of years ago. But it might also have something to do with the power plants that burn the coal. Some plants inject activated carbon or lime into the flue gas, which captures mercury and sulfur emissions, respectively. At 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, toxins such as arsenic and selenium in the flue are gaseous, and the physics that dictate how the particles will cool and recombine to form ash is uncontrollable.

But regardless of the how, researchers now know that they should be paying closer attention to the fine details encapsulated within the end results.

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FE0031748) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (5U2C-ES030851). This research utilized U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility resources at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource facility operated by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (DE-AC02-76SF0051) and at the Hard X-ray Nanoprobe (HXN) Beamline at 3-ID of the National Synchrotron Light Source II facility operated by Brookhaven National Laboratory (DE-SC0012704).

CITATION: “Nanoscale Heterogeneity of Arsenic and Selenium Species in Coal Fly Ash Particles: Analysis using enhanced spectroscopic imaging and speciation techniques,” Nelson A. Rivera, Jr, Florence T. Ling, Ajith Pattammattel, Hanfei Yan, Yong S. Chu, Catherine Peters, Heileen Hsu-Kim. Environmental Science: Nano, June 6, 2023. DOI: 10.1039/D2EN01056A

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

Follow @BrookhavenLab on Twitter or find us on Facebook. 

AUSTRALIA

Rio Tinto inks deal to bring iron ore rail car manufacturing to Pilbara

Reuters | June 13, 2023 |

Image: Gemco Rail

Mining giant Rio Tinto said on Tuesday it will partner with Western Australia-based Gemco Rail to bring local iron ore rail car manufacturing and bearing maintenance to the Pilbara region.


Rio intends to invest about A$150 million ($101.2 million) to acquire 100 domestically built ore rail cars over six years, it said.

Adequate rail and road infrastructure are crucial to iron ore producers as they add to the convenience of swiftly moving around finished products to consumption centres, while also easing the process of receiving raw materials from local mines.

The company, which operates about 14,000 ore cars across its Pilbara rail network, said that each ore car can hold an estimated 118 tonnes of iron ore.

Gemco, which is part of transport solutions provider Engenco, will build the first 40 ore cars at its facility in Forrestfield, with the first car expected to be delivered in 2024.

Rio also plans to establish an additional construction facility by the end of 2024 in order to aid the development of Gemco’s ore cars.

The new facility, based in Karratha, will reduce transportation woes between Pilbara and Perth, while reducing 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, Rio said.

“This will bring a new industry to Pilbara, creating jobs and providing more opportunities for local and Indigenous businesses,” Rio Tinto Iron Ore’s chief executive Simon Trott said.

Once operational, Gemco Rail is expected to build an average of 10 ore cars per year, under the partnership.

To further smoothen its operations in Pilbara, Rio said it will embrace continued investment in bearing refurbishment, a sustainable and green maintenance procedure that delivers significant reduction in raw material consumption, over 10 years.

($1 = 1.4819 Australian dollars)

(By Roushni Nair and Archishma Iyer; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Sonia Cheema)

Rio Tinto to invest $1.1 billion to expand aluminum smelter in Canada

Reuters | June 12, 2023 

Rio Tinto spent $6 billion modernizing its aluminum smelter in Kitimat, British Columbia. Image from Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto will invest $1.1 billion to expand its “low-carbon” aluminum smelter at Complexe Jonquière in Quebec, Canada, the Anglo-Australian mining giant said on Monday.


The investment will boost annual capacity by about 160,000 metric tonnes of primary aluminum, the global miner said, adding it was sufficient to power 400,000 electric cars.

Pressure to cut greenhouse gas emissions has prompted Rio, Alcoa Corp, and other aluminum manufacturers to launch a raft of products with lower carbon emissions.

The Canadian government has been involved in such efforts. It has invested in the ELYSIS technology pioneered by Alcoa and Rio Tinto that eliminates all CO2 emissions and replaces them with oxygen.

“This announcement brings us one step closer to the deployment of the first ELYSIS pots, which will make Quebec the leader in greenhouse gas-free aluminum production,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s minister of economy, innovation and energy.

The Quebec government will provide up to $113 million in support for the latest smelter expansion.

“This is the most significant investment in our aluminum business for more than a decade…,” Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm said.

Construction will run over two-and-a-half years, with commissioning of the new pots expected to start in the first half of 2026 and the smelter fully ramped up by the end of 2026.

The project will create up to 1,000 jobs during peak construction, with about 100 permanent jobs.

The investment has been factored into the capital expenditure for 2023 to 2025, Rio Tinto said, retaining the capex guidance of $9 billion to $10 billion for 2024 and 2025.

The expansion will coincide with the gradual closure of potrooms at the Arvida smelter on the same site, Rio said.

Rio and the Canadian government also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen supply chains for low-carbon primary metals, critical minerals and other value-added products, the miner said.

(By Harish Sridharan; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

LKAB raises deposit estimate at Europe’s biggest rare earth find

Reuters | June 12, 2023 |

The town and mine of Kiruna, Sweden. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Swedish mining company LKAB on Monday raised by a quarter its estimate of the size of deposits of rare earth oxides in the Kiruna area of northern Sweden, already Europe’s biggest discovery of minerals key to green technologies like electric motors.


Resources at the Per Geijer deposit, which is rich in elements used to make permanent magnets, are now estimated at 1.3 million tonnes, up from an earlier estimate of more than 1 million, LKAB said.

“In January Per Geijer was already the biggest known deposit in Europe in terms of those materials,” LKAB CEO Jan Mostrom said. “We have raised the volume by around 25%.”

LKAB said it would now submit an application for a processing concession which will give it exclusive rights to develop the deposit. LKAB will still need an environmental permit and other regulatory approvals before it can start commercial operations.

The European Commission wants to speed up the development of new mines like Per Geijer to end its dependence for exotic minerals like dysprosium, praseodymium and neodymium on China.

Electrification of industry and transport away from fossil fuels is seen as critical to fighting climate change.

“If we are going to get near our targets for 2030, 2035, 2045, we are going to have to have enormous amounts of these materials,” Mostrom said.

LKAB warned In January that it could take 10-15 years before mining started at Per Geijer due to the complicated permitting process in Sweden.

But Mostrom said the European Union’s proposed Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) could be a game-changer.

“If the Per Geijer deposit is deemed a strategic project, it will go considerably faster,” he said.

The CRMA sets a target for 10% of the EU’s annual consumption of critical minerals to be mined within the bloc by 2030. It also states that strategically important projects should get extraction permits within 24 months.

Sweden, with a long history of mining, has huge mineral resources, but has only given the go-ahead to a handful of new mines over the last 20 years.

It currently has 12 operating mines.

(By Simon Johnson; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Barrick paves the way for reintroduction of white rhino to DRC's Garamba park

16 white rhinos have been successfully reintroduced to the Garamba National Park in the northeast of the DRC.

The rhinos were sourced from the &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in Kwazulu

Natal, South Africa

Their translocation was achieved in collaboration with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, the Congolese government and African Parks.


13th June 2023
By: Creamer Media Reporter

An initiative begun by Barrick president and CE Mark Bristow almost 13 years ago has come to fruition with the successful reintroduction of 16 white rhinos to the Garamba National Park in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the species was last seen in 2006.

Following more than a decade of dedicated action and support, an environment has been created where they can exist safely. The rhino arrived by aircraft from South Africa last week and have now been released in the park where professional staff and qualified veterinarians will regularly monitor their acclimatisation.


NYSE- and TSX-listed Barrick Gold was the lead donor in the translocation as part of its long-standing partnership with African Parks and Garamba National Park, Africa’s oldest wildlife park and a Unesco World Heritage Site. To date, Barrick has provided more than $2.5-million for tracking collars, fuel for observation planes, rescue and rehabilitation programmes, as well as improvements to critical infrastructure such as roads and bridges.

The rhinos were sourced from the &Beyond Phinda Private Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and their translocation was achieved in collaboration with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature, the Congolese government and African Parks.


Garamba was one of the last strongholds of the now extinct wild northern white rhino. The introduction of the near-threatened southern sub-species not only promotes the long-term conservation of rhino in Africa by extending their range, but also creates another breeding node for the species in a safe environment.

Since African Parks assumed management of Garamba in 2005, there has been a significant decrease in poaching and most wildlife species found there are showing positive population increases, thanks largely to the development of alternative socio-economic initiatives in and around the park. Additionally, rhino have historically played an important role in regulating the structure and functioning of the park’s ecosystem, creating and maintaining grazing lawns that support other fauna and flora and provide important ecosystem services.

Bristow says Barrick’s continued support for Garamba is based on the company’s holistic approach to sustainability.

“Conserving biodiversity is fundamental to planetary survival, essential to tackling climate change and has an important role to play in the war on poverty. We strive not only to preserve and maintain biodiversity within our permits but to partner with NGOs and other organizations, such as African Parks and Garamba, to protect and restore critical biodiversity in some of the world’s most precious places,” he says.

Barrick’s successful group-wide biodiversity strategy places importance on protecting areas with high conservation value.

It is very important to understand the relationship between the natural environment and the communities that depend on it. Garamba is one of the biggest employers in the region, with over 500 full-time staff and hundreds more employees on contract, including law enforcement teams and dedicated community personnel. The park also supports more than 9 000 community members in entrepreneurial enterprises including beekeeping, fish and poultry farming as well as four hospitals with a capacity of 12 000 patients. 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Billionaire Forrest calls Musk a ‘muppet’ over fuel cell doubts

Bloomberg News | June 13, 2023 

Andrew Forrest, Australian billionaire and Chief Executive Officer of Fortescue. (Credit: Fortescue Metals Group)

Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire betting much of the fortune he made in iron-ore mining on green power, said doubters of hydrogen fuel-cell technology are “muppets.” That includes Elon Musk.


“Anyone, including Elon, including, you know, whoever you like, who says hydrogen hasn’t got a massive future are muppets,” Forrest said in an on-stage interview at the Bloomberg New Economy Gateway Africa forum in Marrakesh, Morocco, on Tuesday. “Battery and fuel cells are the way of the world in the future.”



Musk, the world’s richest person and founder of electric-carmaker Tesla Inc., has previously described hydrogen fuel-cell technology as “the most dumb thing I could possibly imagine for energy storage.”

While Musk uses lithium-battery technology in Tesla vehicles, Forrest is focusing on using green energy including solar to produce hydrogen, which is then stored and used to power fuel cells in the auto and other industries. The 61-year-old is the founder, chairman and biggest shareholder in Perth-based Fortescue Metals Group Ltd.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent by email.

(By Matthew Hill, with assistance from Sarah Muller)

SASKATCHEWAN
CanAlaska to start drilling at Geikie uranium project

By MINING.COM Staff 

 June 13, 2023

Waterbury South is one of several uranium projects CanAlaska holds in the Athabasca Basin in Saskatchewan. Credit: CanAlaska

CanAlaska Uranium (TSX-V: CVV) (OTCQX: CVVUF) has begun mobilizing its field team, drill crew and equipment to it’s 60%-owned Geikie uranium project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin, an area that currently supplies about 20% of the world's uranium.

The program, the company said, will be focused on testing shallow, high-priority targets that have been compiled from recent high-resolution airborne radiometric, magnetic, and electromagnetic surveys in combination with prospecting, structural mapping and historical data review.

The initial drill program is planned for 2,000 metres, consisting of eight drill holes with proposed depths around 250 metres each.

“From inception of the project through to this first drilling program, the Company has been diligent with its methodical approach to exploration and developing very high-quality targets for testing,” chief executive officer Cory Belyk said in the statement.

CanAlaska will initially focus on a 15-km-long area with three high-priority targets: Preston Creek, Hourglass Lake and Aero Lake.

The Vancouver-based company holds interests in about 300,000 hectares (750,000 acres) located in the eastern Athabasca Basin. The miner is working with Cameco and Denison at two of the its properties in the Eastern Athabasca Basin.

It also holds properties prospective for nickel, copper, gold and diamonds.

Canada is the world’s second-largest uranium producer as well as one of the few offering reactor technology and related services.

Fireweed Metals Names its Mactung Project Largest High-Grade Tungsten Deposit in the World

by Sarah Vega - Content Writer, The Assay


Mactung drilling map showing the vertical projection of open-pit inferred and indicated Resources, conceptual pit outline, and location of cross-sections.

Fireweed Metals (TSXV: FWZ | OTC: FWEDF) has released a new mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its Mactung tungsten project in the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada.

Mactung’s MRE included a total of 41.5Mt of indicated resource grading at 0.73% tungsten trioxide (WO3) and an inferred resource of 12.2Mt at 0.59% WO3. The deposit also contains copper and gold byproducts with a total breakdown of its indicated resource at 12.2Mt grading 0.058% Cu and 0.078g/t Au.

“In one year, we have gone from signing an initial Letter of Intent to a Definitive Asset Purchase Agreement to the publication of new mineral resource for Mactung,” commented Fireweed CEO Brandon Macdonald.

“We have taken the historic resource through a process involving relogging, resampling, and a rigorous, modern estimation methodology, and confirmed an impressive and world-class tungsten resource at Mactung*.”

Mactung was originally discovered and staked in 1962, where it passed through many owners until 1997 when North American Tungsten acquired it. The project was given the environmental go-ahead in 2014, but the following year, North American was granted creditor protection (related to its Cantung mine to the south), and the territory purchased the property for C$4.5M. Earlier this year, Fireweed purchased the project for C$15M in a staged arrangement.

The project neighbors Fireweed’s Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver project camp and airstrip and provides opportunities for future project collaboration. In addition, the recent MRE has identified an exploration target and is estimated at 2.5Mt to 3.5Mt grading between 0.4% – 0.6% WO3, within the mineral resource.

“This not only reaffirms Mactung’s unmatched combination of grade and scale but establishes it as a truly strategic critical minerals project for the West with the underground resource alone able to supply much of North America’s expected demand for decades.” Macdonald added.

For further information, please visit: www.fireweedmetals.com

*: References to relative size and grade of the Mactung mineral resources and Macmillan Pass mineral resources in comparison to other tungsten and zinc deposits elsewhere in the world, respectively, are based on review of the S&P’s Global Market Intelligence Capital IQ database.