SUDBURY, ONTARIO

What mining, oil and gas industries can learn from a city that went from major pollution to thriving environment

by Nadia Mykytczuk, The Conversation

For almost 100 years, Sudbury’s community and environment were blanketed in sulfur

 dioxide and metals released from the smelting of nickel ore. Credit: Shutterstock

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in Montréal two years ago, he promised to plant two billion trees by 2030 to help Canada meet its net-zero emissions goal.

Planting trees, however, is hard work. It takes money and planning. But a re-greening roadmap exists.

Sudbury, the largest city in Northern Ontario, transformed itself after decades of environmental devastation, brought on by the mining industry. Other communities and industries, like oil and gas, can replicate the city's efforts to aid in global efforts to fight climate change.

A devastated landscape

For almost 100 years, Sudbury's community and environment were blanketed in sulfur dioxide and metals released from the smelting of nickel ore. The sulfur acidified the soils, rain and lakes. The pollution triggered the complete loss of vegetation, leaving barren rolling hills of blackened rock. It was a devastated landscape.

But 40 years ago, scientists, citizens, governments and mining companies in Sudbury set out with the goal that, no matter how damaged the environment was, it was worth trying to repair it. Since then, city- and industry-led programs have planted 12 million trees and revitalized over 3,400 hectares of land. People now swim and fish in the 330 lakes that fall within the city boundaries and were once highly acidic.

Today, Sudbury has some of the cleanest air in all of Ontario. That's hard to believe given the city once emitted 2.5 million tons of sulfur dioxide per year. In the 1980s, the "Sudbury" became known as a unit of pollution, against which other industrial cities were measured. It's now become known as a unit of restoration.

Sudbury offers proof that it is possible to leave a healthier environment than the one we inherited, and proof that we can change our climate for the better.

Contrast of barren land surround smelters in Sudbury in about 1970 (left) and 2015 (right). Credit: Vale Living with Lakes Centre

Capturing gases

Against the realities of climate change, industrial pollution and urban expansion, stories of environmental recovery and restoration are rare. But a healthy environment doesn't have to come at the expense of industrial activity.

While scientists developed solutions for restoring the land and water, industry re-engineered their processes to reduce and capture their emissions. Sudbury mining companies, Inco and Falconbridge (now Vale and Glencore) led the way in reducing sulfur dioxide release from their smelter. Nickel production continued to grow in spite of more stringent pollution limits.

The Sudbury situation was pivotal in negotiations between Canada and the United States that led to the signing of the 1991 U.S.-Canada Air Quality Agreement. The agreement, also known as the acid rain accord, helped solve the largest environmental issues at the time.

Without strong policy in North America and Europe, acid rain would have continued to threaten forests and fisheries in Canada and the U.S. Now, 30 years later, we can use the same approach with strong regulations on emissions, scientific evidence and solutions, and industrial re-alignment to capture carbon dioxide emissions and make the critical strides needed to meet climate change targets.

Meeting climate targets with mining

Sudbury hasn't solved all of its problems. It still carries a legacy of millions of tons of reactive mine waste materials, which can release acids and metals that can contaminate food webs and drinking water. These have to be managed by industry to avoid impacting the environment and surrounding communities.

Vale and Glencore are working with scientists again to develop new ways of treating, covering and restoring these vast tailings ponds. They are looking for ways to turn these barrens into areas for carbon capture, to grow biofuel crops or to use the land for renewable energy installations.

Acid rain can kill trees, like this woods in Jezera Mountains in the Czech Republic. Credit: Lovecz/Wikimedia

In some cases, these wastes still contain low levels of metals that could not be extracted in the smelter. But we now have the means to capture these metals through low-energy technologies or using bacteria to extract metals from minerals.

The global demand for critical metals like nickel, cobalt and copper is growing to support production of electric vehicles. In the next 25 years, the world will need as much copper as was mined in the past 500 years, according to Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest metals and mining companies. Some of that demand can be met using waste.

Lessons from Sudbury

We cannot meet climate change targets without transitioning away from fossil fuels, but we cannot produce renewable energy technologies like batteries and solar panels without mining the minerals used to make them. We can't let one set of environmental issues replace another.

But we don't have to, and the history of Sudbury shows the way. Community, government, academia and industry can work together to face a massive challenge like climate change.

We need to focus on scientific solutions and move away from the old ways of doing things because "that's how it's always been done." Net-zero and zero-waste mining is possible—and necessary. They are ultimately part of a sustainable energy future.

At the start of this UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the Sudbury model is an important recipe to apply to climate change. Where we once sacrificed the environment for the sake of industrial expansion, we now need to transition to smarter industrial processes to protect the environment, wean ourselves off fossil fuels and build a more resilient global community in the face of climate change.

How bacteria can recover precious metals from electric vehicle batteries

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Teck mining magnate stands between Glencore and mega-deal
Bloomberg News | April 8, 2023 |

(Reference image by Teck Resources).

The fate of the biggest mining deal in more than a decade lies in the hands of a Canadian magnate who built a fortune on copper and coal.


Norman Keevil Jr., 85, is the controlling shareholder of Teck Resources Ltd., a mining company he built with his father nearly six decades ago. Today, the Vancouver-based firm produces copper and zinc from a handful of mines scattered across the Americas, and steelmaking coal from lucrative operations in Canada.

Those assets make Teck appealing to global miners hunting for more of the industrial metals that underpin the global transition to cleaner energy, prompting Swiss commodities giant Glencore Plc to make an unsolicited $23 billion bid on March 26.

Glencore’s interest doesn’t guarantee a deal gets done. The Keevil family’s control of Teck through voting shares has long insulated the company from takeovers. While Canadian metals producers like Falconbridge Ltd., Inco Ltd. and Alcan Inc. fell to foreign firms in the early 2000s, the family’s iron grip kept Teck independent. Even now, Keevil shows little interest in selling the company he spent decades building.

“He’s like the last of a generation of mine builders in Canada,” said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada. “You think of all those people that built Canada’s biggest mining companies, and Norm is the last one standing.”

Keevil was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1938 and spent the better part of his childhood in northern Ontario’s wilderness. His father, a Harvard University graduate turned prospector, abandoned academia in the 1950s to develop a small copper deposit near a remote settlement named Teck Township, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of Toronto.

‘Rest on your ores’

The mine became a family business, and Keevil joined his father’s company after completing a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1960s. In a 2017 memoir, Never Rest on Your Ores: Building a Mining Company, One Stone at a Time, Keevil recalled attending monthly board meetings in a log cabin on an island across from the mine.

“Norm and his dad really started the company from grassroots, with nothing,” said Edward Thompson, 87, who befriended Keevil in college and became one of Teck’s first executives.

Keevil shared his father’s penchant for high-stakes business gambles, and when Keevil took over as chief executive officer in 1982 he enacted a flurry of acquisitions that netted the company some of its most lucrative base metal operations. At the apex of the 1980s oil shock, he borrowed heavily to finance oil and coal projects in Canada’s western provinces. Later, he sought backing from Japanese and Chinese investors to pitch in on expensive mining ventures further north.

Keevil didn’t possess the typical bravado of mining executives of the time, Thompson said, calling him “aggressive in business, but quite soft-spoken — almost shy.”

“When we’re together, I sometimes have trouble hearing him because he’ll talk so quietly,” he said.

Still, Keevil rarely minced words when it came to business. During the battle to acquire Inco in 2006 — which drew bids from foreign firms as well as Teck — Keevil said its CEO “sold Canada out for his own purposes.”

Today, Keevil lives in British Columbia and has largely retreated from public life. He holds a spot in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame and has departments named after him at the University of Toronto and University of British Columbia. Keevil didn’t respond to Bloomberg requests for comment.

After Glencore’s proposal, Keevil — who holds an honorary position as chairman emeritus at Teck — issued a brief statement on April 3: “I unequivocally support the board’s decision to reject Glencore’s unsolicited offer to acquire Teck. Now is not the time to explore a transaction of this nature.”

Teck has been protected from such takeovers thanks to the Keevil family’s unusual choice in 1969 to separate shares of the company into two classes, with one set carrying more power than the other. Through a holding company called Temagami Mining Co., the family has the majority of class A shares, each entitled to 100 votes, while the public has class B shares, which carry one vote.

“Without the protection of our dual-share structure, Teck would have been swallowed up,” Keevil wrote in his memoir. “We could have been the target of an opportunistic takeover and a longtime Canadian mining champion lost to foreign hands.”

Corporate filings released on April 3 showed that Teck board members began talks with Keevil a year ago to consider collapsing the share structure, citing growing investor unrest. Keevil and the board spent about four months negotiating before arriving at an agreement in January.

That deal, which requires approval from shareholders in an April 26 vote, would give the Keevils six more years of control of a company they’ve so carefully guarded.

“It’s like giving your baby away,” Thompson said. “It’s tough to see something you spent a lifetime creating disappear.”

(Reporting by Jacob Lorinc).

Canadian entrepreneur Lassonde plans to buy blocking stake in Teck’s Elk Valley – Globe and Mail

Reuters | April 8, 2023 |

Pierre Lassonde. (Image by Gilbertus, Wikimedia Commons.)

Canadian entrepreneur Pierre Lassonde is planning to buy a blocking stake in Elk Valley Resources, the steel-making coal unit to be spun off by Teck Resources, the Globe and Mail reported.


In an interview with the Canadian newspaper published on Friday, Lassonde expressed his interest in the soon-to-be divested unit of Teck, saying he wanted the company’s assets to “remain Canadian.”

Lassonde’s comments came after Teck Resources rejected an unsolicited takeover offer of $22.5 billion from Glencore Plc earlier this week, citing reluctance to expose its shareholders to thermal coal, oil, LNG and related sectors through the merger.

Lassonde would “love” to own up to 20% of Elk Valley, the report said, adding that he is planning to put together a group of investors who would buy up to C$300 million of the company’s shares, giving them a 10%-20% stake.

Teck Resources could not be reached immediately for comment. There was no contact information for Lassonde immediately available.

Under terms of a deal offered previously by minority shareholder Nippon Steel, the Elk Valley unit will have an enterprise value of C$11.5 billion. Teck Resources in February said it will receive an 87.5% interest in gross revenue royalty from the steel-making coal business through the transition period.

(Reporting by Rahat Sandhu in Bengaluru and editing by Leslie Adler).

The war in Ukraine has Canadian mining companies looking to Africa

With mineral prices high and Russian commodities sanctioned, Canadian firms ramp up lucrative mining projects on the continent

Owen Schalk / June 8, 2022 / 

Phosphate mining in Togo. 

Photo by Alexandra Pugachevsky/Wikimedia Commons.

The invasion of Ukraine and the resultant Western sanctions against Russia have wrought far-reaching consequences on global commodity flows. These impacts are evident in a number of global shortages, such as the lack of cooking oil in Indonesia and the paucity of fuel in Sri Lanka, the latter of which has been unable to pay for imports since global crude prices soared in early 2022. Food prices are up in the underdeveloped countries of Central Asia, while medical supplies (for which Russia was their largest provider before the onset of Western sanctions) have grown scarcer.

Africa, which imports 85 percent of its wheat (one-third of which comes from Russia and Ukraine), has also felt the strain of the highest food prices in decades. Egypt in particular is scrambling to replace Ukrainian wheat imports, which had previously comprised 80 percent of its stockpile. The Egyptian government had hoped to replace Ukrainian wheat with imports from India, but on May 14, India banned wheat exports, citing the risk of food shortages within its own borders. Thankfully, Cairo has stated that India will honour its previous contract to export 500,000 tonnes of wheat to Egypt, but the future integrity of this arrangement remains unclear, which has led Egypt to seek additional partners in France, Kazakhstan, and Australia.

The price of many important minerals also skyrocketed following the Russian attack. Russia’s economy holds seven percent of the world’s nickel supply, 10 percent of its platinum, 20 percent of its titanium, and 25 percent of its palladium. The price of these metals and others, including aluminum, cobalt, and copper, spiked in March 2022, only to stabilize in the ensuing months, albeit at above-normal prices in many cases.

Some of the most fluctuant minerals are central components of Canada’s $3.8 billion Critical Minerals Strategy, announced by the Trudeau government in 2021 as a way to “capitalize on rising global demand for critical minerals,” to secure inputs for “renewable energy and clean technology applications,” and to guarantee Canada’s economic primacy in the fields of “defence and security technologies, consumer electronics, agriculture, medical applications and critical infrastructure.”

While the Canadian government continues to support the extraction of these minerals domestically, Canada’s mining industry has assumed an increasingly global orientation over the past few decades, especially since the imposition of neoliberal structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on countries across the Global South. Latin America has historically been the most profitable region for Canadian mining companies operating outside North America, but recently, both the Biden and Trudeau governments have spotlighted Africa as an increasingly key supplier for their respective critical minerals strategies.

Steven Fox, executive chairman of New York-based political risk consultancy Veracity Worldwide, has asserted that the Biden administration “wants to position itself as a strong supporter of battery metals projects in sub-Saharan Africa.” These battery metals are an essential component in the creation of electric vehicles and other less fossil fuel-reliant technologies, whose production is described by some as a way of weaning Europe off of Russian energy imports. Additionally, the lack of environmentally appropriate regulations in many African countries, often the result of SAPs and Western advisement on extractive policy, means that mining projects are likelier more efficient—and thus more profitable—to pursue on the continent.

“While Africa presents its challenges,” explained Fox, “those challenges are no more difficult than the corresponding set of challenges in Canada. It may be easier to actually bring a project to fruition in Africa, than in a place like Canada or the US.”

In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war and the increasingly profitable and strategic exploitation of battery metals, Canadian politicians have stressed the need to maintain and expand access to critical minerals on the African continent. In addition to securing a market for Canada’s Critical Minerals Strategy, such access will have the effect of keeping Africa, which has largely sought to remain neutral in the conflict, as a crucial supplier of the minerals with which Canada and its allies hope to blunt the economic blowback of the invasion and of their sanctions programs against Russia.

Canadian capital finances or operates mining projects in over 100 countries, and extraction is growing every year. By 2025, the Mining Global Market Report of 2021 estimates that the global mining and minerals market will reach a value of $2.4 trillion—a compound annual growth rate of seven percent. This growth will be achieved, the report states, with wide-ranging governmental support. “Government policies to support the mining industry [are] expected to drive the mining market,” the report’s summary explains:
Governments are providing subsidies and encouraging foreign direct investments (FDI) in the mining industry. The amount of government support includes the support through governments’ public finance institutions such as bilateral development banks and export credit agencies investing in mining projects, fiscal support through budget allocations and tax exemptions, and investments through majority state-owned mining and utility companies.


Canada is no exception. The Canadian government regularly finances mining operations abroad through its publicly funded state development arms while aggressively lobbying for neoliberal reforms in the countries in which these mines are located. These countries, such as Guatemala, Colombia and Burkina Faso, tend to be underdeveloped states in which the US and its European allies have violently hacked their way into lucrative resource markets, leaving a trail of corpses in their wake.

Prior to the era of structural adjustment, the Canadian government cozied up to brutal right wing states throughout Africa, such as Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (between 1985 and 1989, Canada provided his regime with almost $140 million in assistance), apartheid South Africa (Canadian mining companies such as Falconbridge profited from cheap labour in illegally occupied Namibia and elsewhere), and Idi Amin’s Uganda (around one year after Amin announced the expulsion of Uganda’s South Asian population, the Canadian High Commissioner in Nairobi visited Uganda, not to criticize Amin’s policies but to implore him to reverse the nationalization of Toronto-based shoemaking giant Bata Shoes). These policies represented a conscious alignment on the part of the Canadian state with the forces opposed to the left wing pan-Africanist vision of leaders like Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba, whose removals were supported by Canadian officials.

In the post-Cold War period, US-led international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were able to impose neoliberal reforms across much of the African continent, allowing Canadian capital to reap the rewards. Canada itself played a notable role in this process; in the case of Tanzania, the Canadian government threatened to withhold aid unless the state accepted an IMF structural adjustment plan, while in South Africa, Canadians were instrumental in pressuring the new ANC government against redistributing the country’s mineral wealth toward its less privileged (in other words, its Black) population.

In the following years, numerous Canadian governments prioritized the negotiation of Foreign Investment Protection Acts (FIPAs) in African countries, legal acts which give corporations the right to sue governments in private tribunals for the “crime” of interfering with their investments. The Harper government negotiated FIPAs with 15 African countries, some of which were signed or announced at mining conventions. Meanwhile, Justin Trudeau announced negotiations for a FIPA with Ethiopia in 2020, and later signed an FIPA with Nigeria.

Former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade Omar Alghabra stated that FIPAs such as these are meant to “encourage increased bilateral investments between our countries by helping to reduce risk and by increasing investor confidence in our respective markets.” His use of the term “bilateral investments” is misleading—these laws are designed to protect the interests of Canadian companies operating in Africa, not vice versa. After all, there are no Malian or Burkinabè mining giants investing billions in Canadian extraction, and Tanzanian companies do not own 50 percent of Canada’s GDP, as Canadian companies do in Zambia.

Over the past few decades, Canadian mining investment abroad has increased considerably, to the degree that foreign mining assets now comprise 70 percent of the total value of all Canadian-owned mining operations—in other words, $188 billion of $273.4 billion. In Africa, the total value of Canadian mining assets is $36.5 billion.

In 2020, 106 Canadian-owned mining companies operated in Africa. Their investments span the continent but are mainly concentrated in a handful of countries. The most treasured countries, each containing Canadian mining assets valued at over $1 billion, are Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Zambia, and South Africa. Some other less lucrative but nonetheless important countries, with Canadian assets valued between $100 million and $1 billion, are Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Niger, Namibia, and Botswana. Out of all these countries, Zambia is the most valuable for Canada-based companies, with Canadian-owned assets valued at around $10 billion—approximately half of Zambia’s total GDP, as stated above.

In the most recent edition of Canadian Mining Journal, Bill Kellaway, Colin Rawbone, and John Paul Hunt write that “Global economic recovery and the focus on battery minerals is seeing greater interest in mineral exploration, not least in areas of central and southern Africa.” In this context, Canadian prospectors and geologists are working across Africa, using “the digital revolution” to their advantage by bringing global positioning system (GPS) technology and “powerful modelling software” to regions like the Central African Copperbelt, “allow[ing] historical exploration data to be revisited and more intensively analysed.”

With mineral prices high and Russian commodities largely excised from the investment map, it is no wonder that Canadian companies are seeking profit on a continent that they know will generate significant returns—at the expense of ordinary people in the relevant countries, as always. At the recent Mining Indaba, an annual South Africa-hosted gathering of continental and international figures aimed at promoting the mining sector, Canada’s First Quantum Minerals announced $1.25 billion in new investment in Zambia, whose president Hakainde Hichilema has promised foreign investors that there would be “no mining nationalism” in his country. Barrick Gold has revealed its intention to expand investment talks with Zambia as well.

At the Indaba (which is sponsored by some of the largest mining companies in the world), investments such as these were celebrated under the banner of “energy transition” and “ESG [environmental, social, and governance]” considerations, but it was impossible to ignore the geopolitical context of the event as well. The volatility of global commodity markets in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the need to find less uncertain supply sources for critical minerals, was evident not only in the speeches of government and private officials, but also in the fact that the US sent a high-level delegate to the event for the first time in its history.

That delegate was Jose Fernandez, the US Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, who identified 40 critical minerals on the US shopping list and the Biden administration’s intention to secure them from Africa. Tony Carroll, executive advisor on the conference, stated that Fernandez was “the first truly high-ranking US government official we’ve had at the Mining Indaba in the 28 years [of its existence].”

Canadian officials, however, are a staple at the Indaba. Last year saw the attendance of Mary Ng, the Trudeau government’s Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade, who used her public position to promote the role of the Canadian mining sector in Africa. This year, Ng’s parliamentary secretary Arif Virani travelled to the Indaba (as well as to Zambia) to bolster “Canada’s role as a trusted partner of African companies, industry associations and governments” and to promote, in his words, “responsible business conduct, sustainable mining and inclusive trade.”

The Indaba also featured speeches from Clive Johnson, CEO of B2Gold (one of the largest Canadian miners in West Africa, which drew $630 million from the Fekola gold mine in Mali in 2021), Tristan Pascal of First Quantum (which was recently hit with $8 billion in unpaid import taxes on its Zambian operations), Mark Bristow, CEO of Barrick Gold (one of the most significant gold mining companies in the world), Robert Friedland, billionaire founder of Ivanhoe Mines, and representatives from many of the world’s other leading mining companies.

Putin and the war in Ukraine were referenced overtly in some speeches. When discussing his interest in securing access to South African platinum, Friedland stated “We’re not going to buy it from the Russian Tsar. He’s killing people with his cash flow. Until he stops that kind of behaviour, we will not buy his platinum.” He also made reference to the green transition and stated the need to “develop a lot more mines” on the way to creating sustainable enterprise. In this case and others, the push to expand mineral investments in Africa is dressed up in green, “pro-democratic” language, designed to give the impression that moral rather than material factors are motivating Canadian investment in the continent. The truth, though, is less virtuous: due to the burden of neocolonialism and the imperialistic refashioning of African economies toward an export orientation, Africa is simply the most lucrative place in which to obtain these resource flows.

As the world continues to readjust to uncertain commodity prices and geopolitical rupture resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Canadian mining industry has chosen to double-down on its exploitation of African resources. Canadian companies and their backers in the state would not prioritize this investment unless it continued to serve the essentially neocolonial agenda of the Canadian elite, whose commitment to this global project of unequal development has remained unwavering for decades. While some may believe that increased investment in African minerals will increase standards of living on the continent, it seems more likely that Walter Rodney’s 1972 assertion will prove true once more: while Western industry adapts and develops, the mining that goes on in Africa will leave “[nothing but] holes in the ground.”

Owen Schalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He is primarily interested in applying theories of imperialism, neocolonialism, and underdevelopment to global capitalism and Canada’s role therein. Visit his website at www.owenschalk.com

https://canadiandimension.com

 

Tycoon Jindal's JSW Steel seeks significant stake in Teck's coal unit

Menaka Doshi and Swansy Afonso, Bloomberg News

JSW Steel Ltd. is looking to snap up a major stake in Teck Resources Ltd.'s metallurgical coal unit as it seeks to secure supplies for its expansion plans, according to Chairman Sajjan Jindal.

India's biggest steel producer intends to bid for 20 per cent to 40 per cent of Elk Valley Resources Ltd., a unit of the Canadian company, Jindal said. Japanese and South Korean mills also plan to buy a stake in the asset, and a combined offer could value the unit at US$8 billion, he said. 

A transaction is likely to happen within a month, the Indian tycoon said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Friday.

Teck produces very high quality metallurgical coal, which India needs for steel-making, as the locally mined material is mostly of a lower grade, Jindal said. “We believe that this could be a very strategic fit for us, therefore we are taking a significant stake.”

Securing coal supplies is key for JSW's plan to almost double its annual steelmaking capacity to 50 million tons in India by the end of the decade. The company is looking for coal assets globally, including in Australia and Canada.

Bloomberg News reported last week that JSW was seeking partners for an offer to acquire a 75 per cent interest in Elk Valley. A JSW-led consortium could yet face competition for the asset from Glencore Plc, which in June proposed buying the business for about US$8 billion as an alternative to a full takeover of Teck.

Teck planning full exit from coal business, in

event of partial sale will spin off remainder

Niall McGee - The Global and Mail | August 18, 2023 | 

Teck’s Fording River metallurgical coal operation in B.C. Credit: Teck Resources

Teck Resources (TSX: TECK-B) intends to completely exit its coal business, but in the event of only a partial sale, would spin off the remainder to ensure a clean break, a source familiar with the situation said.


The Vancouver-based mining company has been entertaining a variety of bids for its metallurgical coal business since late April after an earlier restructuring plan failed.


Teck chief executive officer Jonathan Price said in a conference call last month that there has been “a lot of interest” in the coal business since it was put out for tender.

Glencore PLC GLNCY of Switzerland is the only known bidder for 100 per cent of the coal segment, with an offer worth up to $8.2 billion.

While that would appear to give Glencore a competitive advantage, the source said that Teck could also go the route of selling only a portion of the business to another party, and spinning off the remainder to its shareholders, if it deems that to be a better deal for stakeholders.

The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

Teck declined comment for this story.

Several contenders other than Glencore have emerged in recent months, submitting bids for only a portion of the coal business. Those include a consortium led by Canadian mining veteran Pierre Lassonde, as well as a bid from Japan’s Nippon Steel. Bloomberg News also reported on Thursday that Indian conglomerate JSW Steel is mulling a bid for up to 75 per cent of the coal business.

JSW did not respond to a request for comment.

A deal with Glencore could make life easier for Teck because a sale of the entire coal business would not require a shareholder vote, the source said, while a partial sale in combination with a spinoff may require one, depending on the exact structure of the transaction.

Teck earlier in the year intended to put its original restructuring plan to spin off the full coal business to a shareholder vote. However, after failing to receive sufficient support, the company pulled the proposal, illustrating the uncertainty created by the necessity to hold such votes.

Glencore last week reaffirmed its interest in Teck, saying it has set aside about US$2-billion in cash to be put toward a potential transaction.

While Glencore is focused on acquiring Teck’s coal business, it is still open to buying all of Teck, which would include its significant portfolio of copper and zinc mines.

Several federal ministers have expressed reservations about Glencore buying Teck, including Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. In a letter to the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade earlier this year, all three wrote that “We need companies like Teck here in Canada – companies with a strong commitment to Canada.”

Teck’s history goes back to 1913, when Hughes Gold Mines Ltd. started up a gold mine in Teck Township on the shores of Kirkland Lake, Ont. Three generations of the Keevil family built what is now Canada’s biggest diversified mining company.

Family patriarch Norman B. Keevil told The Globe in April that he had no interest in allowing the whole of Teck to be sold to Glencore, no matter what the price. Teck’s board also twice rejected proposals by Glencore to buy all of Teck.

Glencore’s history in Canada dates back to 2013 when it bought fellow Swiss miner Xstrata PLC, which had earlier acquired Canadian nickel miner Falconbridge Ltd. Glencore employs around 9,000 people in this country.

Glencore also owns a 49.9-per-cent stake in Canadian grain handler Viterra Ltd. However, Glencore agreed in June to sell its stake in the company to American agribusiness company Bunge Ltd. The deal isn’t expected to close until the middle of next year.

Several years ago, Teck kicked off a strategic review after concluding that even though its coal business generates billions in cash flow every year, it is weighing down the valuation of the larger company. There has been less investment demand over time for coal companies owing to the detrimental impact that burning the fossil fuel has on the environment.

Glencore was among the earliest parties interested in buying Teck’s coal business. One of the world’s biggest thermal-coal companies, it operates around 25 mines in Australia, Colombia and South Africa.

Even Brits Get It

One of the top ranking British Capitalists understands that America is no friend of Free Trade....a message that hits home with Canadians.

Especially after Harpers Softwood lumber sell out.

Now imagine Thomas d'Aquino, president and CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives saying something like this....


Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI, will tonight use his first speech since leaving the employers' organisation to attack Britain's special relationship with a "bullying, protectionist" United States.

Addressing the Institute of Directors in Birmingham, Sir Digby will call for the UK to recover its independence not just from Brussels but from Washington.

"One of the most shocking and worrying aspects of loss of independence has been a refusal to stand up to the United States in so many areas," he will argue in a speech called "I want my country back".

Sir Digby will say he is not talking about Iran, Afghanistan or Lebanon, but about areas where "our country could have and should have stood up and fought a protectionist, bullying America - in the fields of trade, investment and the rule of law"

Nope neither can I.

Thoms d'Aquino and the CCCE are integrationists, a quizzling class of capitalist compradors. The FTA and NAFTA were never about Free Trade but an intergrated market in North America, the Contientalist dream of Bay Street.

An example of this contientalism is TD PriceWaterhouse.Whose ads in America are for its investment banking business Price Waterhouse that was bought out by Canada's TD bank. In Canada the TD Bank, formerly the Toronto Domion, now includes TD Price Waterhouse, the former Canada Trust and TDNorthBank an American bank.

The reason the banks want the ability to merge in Canada is for market capitalization that would allow them to buy into the American market even more.

And this is the whole short coming of the CCCE they want our poilitcal economy to look like their intergrated North American boardrooms. The shortsightedness of the Contientalists produced Harpers softwood deal.

But capitalism is global in reach. And this is anathema to the conservative continetalists. They do want a steady state capitalist economy, one that shuts out the world and locks us into Fortress North America. But as always the wiff and poof of capitalism gets in the way.

When the big Canadian Resource companies Teck-Caminco, Inco, Falconbridge began trying to buy each other out to create the ultimate Resource monopoly, they left themselves open to take over by equally voracious global capitalists from abroad.

Their failure was to look abroad for investment opportunities. They really were risk averse to playing in the global marketplace. They only looked as far as their back yard. Unlike Indias Mittal Steel which invests globally and owns major steel companies in the U.S. and now owns Defasco.

Contientalism in Canada has been tried before its called the Auto Pact, and today as the Big 3 American auto companies collapse before the onslaught of global competition, we find ourselves bailing them out, while Toyota, Honda, and their global competitiors invest in Canada.

Free Trade means you are willing to play in the global marketplace not just stay at home buying up each others businesses. Genuine Free Trade is not contientalism, it is in essence Fair Trade globally.

While the economies of rich countries will continue to grow, "a key policy issue should be to find ways to distribute that growth beyond the super-wealthy who have benefited the most for the past two or so decades of growth."An interesting exercise is now underway in the United States to deal with these challenges. It is called The Hamilton Project, and its leaders include Robert Rubin, former U.S. Secretary the Treasury and now chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup Inc. We don't have anything like this in Canada.A recent discussion paper for The Hamilton Project argued that "achieving an equitable distribution of the benefits and costs of trade will require strong, effective government policies," adding that "the need for such policies will only grow more important, as nations like China and India become increasingly dominant forces in the world economy."

Also See

Softwood

Free Trade

Fordism

GM

Free Market

AFRICA

Free Trade; Hong Kong & Somalia

Libertarian Economics

Monoop

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Mining Merger Mania

You can't tell the players without a program.
CHRONOLOGY-Key dates in Canada mining takeover wars
This is a case of globalisation of Canada's mining industry, dog eat dog captialism. Much like the current wave of steel takeovers. Canadian miners flush with cash try to buy each other out to gain a monopoly in the marketplace, leaving themselves open to hostile takeovers by foreign corporations. Ain't capitalism grand. This is more exciting than Canadian Idol. Will they won't they get the brass ring. No wagering please.

Also See:

Mining



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More Evidence For A Social Wage

A new report on Canada's Social Safety net proves what I have been saying here about the need for a Social Wage for ALL Canadians, that is a Living Wage or what was once called The Guaranteed Annual Income.

"When you look at the income-security policies, nothing has fundamentally changed for these folks in 40 years even though the labour market has changed enormously," she said. "Income-security programs are out of sync with the needs of people who are working in our modern economy." Coalition to unveil recommendations on social safety net

The report itself is interesting since those on the panel came from the left and right.

In addition to the Conference Board of Canada, the Caledon Institute and the C.D. Howe Institute, the members include top business leaders (Falconbridge chairman David Kerr and Nestle Purina Canada president Karen Kuwahara), labour leaders (Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti), bank economists Don Drummond (TD Bank) and Warren Jestin (Bank of Nova Scotia), social agencies, academics, foundations and a group of low-income individuals.Coalition to unveil recommendations on social safety net

And while calling for reforms they do not go far enough. Women in Canada not working need wages for housework , and all working class Canadians employed or not need a base social wage for those who earn less than $60,000 a year. As for tax breaks there should be NO income taxes on working class Canadians earning $100,000 or less.

Task force calls for social reforms

Income security programs are failing Canadians and need a federal overhaul that could cost $8.5 billion each year, says an exhaustive report by a task force of Toronto community members and civic leaders. The task force recommends the federal government reform employment insurance, create a new refundable tax benefit for all low-income working-age adults and provide a national disability income support program for those unable to enter the workforce.

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