British firm offers to restart mothballed Australian manganese smelter 

Reuters | August 24, 2026 |

(Image: Liberty Steel Group.)

Natrium Redox Technologies, a green technology startup based in Britain, said on Monday it had made a firm proposal to the Tasmanian government to acquire and restart Australia’s only manganese smelter, to supply global battery and electric vehicle markets.

EY Parthenon said last month the Liberty Bell Bay (LBB) Smelter would close after a proposed sale fell through. The smelter, formerly owned by British industrialist Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, entered voluntary administration in March and liquidation this month after suspending operations mid-last year.

“We have engaged with EY Parthenon and the Tasmanian government on this proposal for six months. We have also briefed the federal government,” Natrium Redox Technologies said in a statement.

“Our restart proposal seeks shared input of funds with government to the level of A$15 million ($10.75 million) for a 16-week restart period and a continuation of the existing electricity contract.”

The federal government has said previously it would consider offering a joint A$20 million startup package for the plant, alongside the Tasmanian government.

“Protecting these jobs and retaining specialist skills will provide certainty for employees and strengthen the future of the facility and the region,” Australia’s Industry Minister Tim Ayres said in a statement.

Tasmanian Business Minister Felix Ellis said potential pathways for the site had been put forward, but no transaction has been completed and no commitments were made.

“EY currently controls the site as liquidator, which includes decisions about its sale,” he said. EY Parthenon had no immediate comment.

Natrium Redox Technologies said it planned initially to use conventional smelting techniques to restart the smelter before building a pilot plant that would use new technology to produce high-purity, low-emissions manganese powder.

The process uses liquid sodium in place of coking coal to strip oxygen from manganese ore. It operates at lower temperatures than traditional smelting and does not produce carbon emissions.

The new technology would add 20% to 40% to the site’s production and lift the smelter up the value chain from being a conventional alloy smelter into one of the highest-value manganese operations in the world by producing battery-grade materials, the company said.

“Battery grade materials sell for a far higher price than conventional alloys, securing LBB’s financial future and ensuring it remains a strategically important critical minerals asset for Australia.”

Its proposal would provide more than 200 jobs previously linked with the smelter, as well as secure others during construction, Natrium Redox Technologies said.

It also has a proposal to reprocess a A$210 million environmental liability that has accumulated from decades of slag and waste, removing environmental liabilities from the government, it said.

The company emphasised that time was of the essence because the longer furnaces are idled, the harder and more expensive a restart would become.

($1 = 1.3953 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Jamie Freed and Thomas Derpinghaus)

WAR IS ECOCIDE

Shipwrecks from WWI and WWII are polluting the North Sea

During both world wars, fierce naval battles took place in the North Sea, and many ships sank. The wrecks remain there today, leaking toxic chemicals that local flora and fauna absorb, new research shows

Aarhus University

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A diver from the Danish Navy is collecting common mussels on the wreck of the german submarine from WW1.

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Credit: Kathrine Juul Andresen

In April 1917, the German submarine UC-30 sailed beneath the waves off the coast of Rømø. It had originally been on a mission in Ireland, but after suffering engine trouble, it turned around and was almost home in Germany.

Onboard, the submarine carried 18 mines and six torpedoes, making it heavily loaded with explosives. However, the submarine never made it back home. On April 19, it struck a British mine and sank. Twenty-seven crew members perished, and the wreck vanished until it was discovered in 2016, nearly 100 years later, by Danish diver Gert Normann Andersen.

The submarine is one of the wrecks that Katrine Juul Andresen, a professor at the Department of Geoscience at Aarhus University, helped investigate as part of the major research project NorthSeaWrecks.

Together with navy divers, she collected samples of the surrounding water, the seabed, and the starfish and mussels living on the wreck.

“Civilian diving is not permitted on the wreck, so we received great assistance from navy divers. After receiving instructions, they dove down and collected sediment samples, water samples, and wildlife samples from various locations on the wreck and from the surrounding seabed.”

“The divers also recorded video and took photos, which we subsequently used to assess the exposure of the mines and the condition of the wreck.”

After analyzing the samples, the professor concluded that the explosives inside the wreck are polluting the surrounding ecosystem.

“We found traces of TNT in the wildlife, the seabed, and the water column. Pollution is definitely occurring. The question is how significant the effect is and how far from the wreck the pollution impacts the marine environment. It is likely a relatively localized source of pollution, but it will worsen as the wreck continues to deteriorate and expose more of the explosive material inside the mines,” she says.

The Battle for the North Sea

The North Sea was critical during World War I for both Germany and Britain. Whoever controlled the waters could dictate which goods entered and exited both countries, effectively allowing them to starve the opponent into submission. Germany, which had a smaller fleet than Britain, attempted from the beginning of the war to use its submarines to sneak up on British ships and sink them. Both nations also laid thousands of mines, hoping enemy ships would hit them. An estimated 190,000 mines were deployed in the North Sea during WWI. Additionally, the largest naval clash in history took place in the North Sea off Hanstholm in Northern Jutland during WWI. The German and British navies clashed at the Battle of Jutland, where more than 25 ships sank and nearly 10,000 sailors lost their lives. As a result, numerous wrecks from that era rest on the seabed.

One of Many Wrecks

The German submarine is only one of many historical wrecks polluting Danish waters. In 2024, Katrine Juul Andresen prepared a report for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency to map and assess the environmental risks posed by such wrecks – and to determine potential measures to prevent or mitigate the pollution.

“In the report, I found that there are 10,127 wrecks in Danish waters. Around 15 percent of them date back to the years around and during the two world wars [1910–1920 and 1940–1945, ed.]. That is quite a high number,” she says.

The report was commissioned by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency to evaluate how Denmark can comply with the EU Water Framework Directive. Consequently, the professor suggests that more concrete measures may eventually be needed to manage this type of pollution.

“I am not aware of whether the agency has taken the work further since the report was published in 2024. However, research shows that the wrecks represent a source of pollution for the local marine environment,” she says.

Detonate or Retrieve?
In Germany, lawmakers have allocated substantial funds to retrieve part of the wrecks and WWII munitions from the Baltic Sea. When the second world war ended, the Allies dumped tons of ammunition into the sea to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Just like the wrecks, however, this submerged ammunition is polluting the marine environment.

“The Germans are further ahead with this than we are in Denmark. They sometimes retrieve explosives from the wrecks and neutralize them, but doing so is very costly,” she notes.

The issue with wrecks loaded with munitions is that detonating them underwater can, in certain cases, disperse the contamination and worsen the problem.

“It depends on the area where the wreck and munitions lie. Currents and seabed morphology play a major role. In some cases, detonating them can do more harm than good,” she explains.

Robots on the Seabed
Alongside international colleagues, Katrine Juul Andresen participates in the EU-funded REMARCO project, researching methods to remove munitions and historical wrecks.

“We are trying to identify the most gentle solutions to the problem, as there is unfortunately no easy way to clean it up,” she says.

Some researchers within the project are experimenting with developing crawling seabed robots capable of mapping the precise locations of dangerous munitions, allowing for better monitoring of the wrecks.

“In some cases, the robots can also pick up items, retrieve them from the sea and neutralize them. That could be one viable solution for the future.”

However, not all wrecks require intervention.

“Some wrecks are fully or partially buried in the seabed. When covered by sand, the risk of polluting the surrounding sea is significantly lower. It is a matter of identifying where the environmental threat is greatest – and then deciding whether the munitions on the wrecks should be removed,” she concludes.

---

Journal

Marine Pollution Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.marpolbul.2026.119738 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Environmental risks from world war shipwrecks: Field-based biomarker evidence from caged mussels in the North Sea

3D model of the wreck of the submarine UC-30, based on seabed scans acquired with a multibeam echosounder.

Professor Kathrine Juul Andresen preparing steel cages for the common mussels before the diving operation begins.

Credit

Kathrine Juul Andresen

So GM Reopened the Ohio Battery Plant. Don't Let That Distract You From What Happened to Indiana and Tennessee.

Shawn Henry
Sun, August 16, 2026 



Seven months after the lights went out, General Motors and LG Energy Solution are flipping them back on at their Ultium Cells battery plant in Warren, Ohio. About 1,400 workers will return Monday. Production of the NCMA pouch cells that power the Chevrolet Equinox EV, the Cadillac Lyriq, and most of GM's electric lineup will resume.

Fine. But here's the part nobody's writing about.

While the Warren plant sat idle for seven months, GM was quietly executing one of the most significant restructurings of its battery manufacturing strategy since it announced the whole thing. It sold its stake in a $3.5 billion Indiana battery factory to Samsung SDI — before the plant ever produced a single commercial cell. It invested $70 million to convert its Tennessee Ultium Cells facility from EV batteries to lithium iron phosphate cells for grid-scale energy storage — specifically including power infrastructure for AI data centers.

Ohio came back. Indiana was handed off. Tennessee found a new boss.

This is not a comeback story. It's a liquidation and reallocation.
The Plant That Reached a Milestone and Then Went Dark

The Warren facility is the original Ultium Cells plant — GM and LG Energy Solution's first large-scale US facility, the proving ground, the one they built from a steel skeleton starting in May 2020. At 2.8 million square feet — roughly 45 football fields — it's capable of producing 45 gigawatt hours of cells annually using advanced NCMA chemistry.

By December 2024, the plant had produced its 100 millionth battery cell. A milestone worth celebrating. Six weeks later, production stopped.

The official reason was "weaker EV demand." The actual trigger was more specific: the elimination of the $7,500 federal EV consumer tax credit on September 30, 2025. When Congress axed the credit, GM's EV sales forecasts changed overnight. The company had already built more battery manufacturing capacity than it needed for a slower market, and Warren — with roughly 850 temporary layoffs and 480 permanent cuts — bore the first consequences. Workers who had been told they'd return in June got another delay to August. Now it's actually August.
What they're returning to is a plant that supplies cells for GM's best-selling EVs — a lineup that has shown genuine recovery signs in the second quarter of 2026. Chevrolet and Cadillac EV sales were up meaningfully. The market isn't fixed, but it's not getting worse.

So Ohio makes sense. That's the easy part.
The Factory That Never Shipped a Cell

The Indiana story deserves more scrutiny.

In April 2023, GM and Samsung SDI announced a $3.5 billion joint venture to build a battery factory in New Carlisle, Indiana. The plant was designed to produce prismatic nickel-rich cells — a different format than the pouch cells made in Ohio — under Samsung's PRiMX brand. Mass production was scheduled to begin in 2027. The facility was expected to employ over 1,600 people and produce 27 gigawatt hours annually, with potential to scale to 36 GWh.

This week, Samsung SDI acquired GM's roughly 50 percent stake. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The Indiana plant has not shipped a single production battery cell. GM committed to a $3.5 billion factory, spent roughly three years reconsidering, and then walked away before the thing opened. Samsung SDI is keeping the plant — converting part of it to energy storage system batteries — and the two companies signed a separate agreement to jointly develop next-generation prismatic batteries. So GM still gets the technology. It just doesn't own the factory.

Think about what that means from a manufacturing strategy standpoint. GM essentially co-funded Samsung SDI's first wholly owned battery factory in North America, then handed it back and said, "We'll buy cells from you." That is a remarkable reversal for a company that spent years insisting domestic battery ownership was non-negotiable.
Tennessee Found a Different Customer

The Spring Hill, Tennessee Ultium Cells plant tells the most surprising chapter of the three.

In March 2026, GM and LG Energy Solution announced they were investing $70 million to convert part of the Tennessee facility to produce lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells — not for EVs, but for stationary energy storage systems. Grid projects. Renewable energy installations. And specifically, power infrastructure for AI data centers. By July, the plant had started LFP cell production.

LFP chemistry is cheaper, longer-lasting in cycle terms, and more thermally stable than the NCMA chemistry used for EV applications. It's ideal for large stationary storage installations that utility companies and data center operators need. It gives up energy density — a problem for a car, a non-issue for a warehouse full of battery racks.

Here's the irony that should stop you cold: the technology that many argue is responsible for accelerating electricity demand and straining grids — AI computing — is now the paying customer keeping an American EV battery factory operating. The EV slowdown created idle factory capacity. AI's relentless appetite for electricity created demand for exactly the kind of batteries that idle factory could pivot to make. One problem fed the other's solution.

GM and LG didn't save Tennessee from the EV market. AI did.
The First Unionized Battery Contract in American History — Then Layoffs Six Months Later

There's one more detail in the Warren story worth acknowledging.

In June 2024, the UAW ratified its contract at the Ultium Cells plant in Warren. It was, by any measure, a historic moment: the first unionized battery manufacturing contract in American history. Workers at a facility that didn't exist four years earlier had secured union representation and a collectively bargained agreement.

Six months later, they were laid off.

That's not a criticism of the union, GM, or LG. It's a reflection of how quickly the economics of EV manufacturing can shift. The $7,500 federal tax credit wasn't just an incentive for consumers. It was the load-bearing wall of GM's near-term EV demand projections. When Congress removed it in September 2025, the wall came down and the production schedule collapsed with it.

Those workers are going back now. But the sequence — ratify the first union battery contract in the country, hit 100 million cells, get laid off within half a year — captures the volatility of building a career in a market that depends as much on congressional arithmetic as on consumer demand.

What This Is Actually About

The Warren restart will be reported as good news, and it is. Jobs are returning. EV cells are flowing again. GM's electric lineup — the Equinox EV, Silverado EV, Blazer EV, Cadillac Lyriq, Vistiq, and the GMC electric vehicles — has enough consumer demand to justify running the plant built for exactly this purpose.

But step back from the individual plant and look at the portfolio. A year ago, GM owned three major Ultium Cells facilities in the United States. Now it owns two, and one of those two has been partially converted to serve AI data centers instead of car buyers.

That's not an EV strategy. That's a battery company strategy. GM is repositioning itself less as an automaker that happens to make batteries and more as an entity that manages battery manufacturing assets across multiple end markets: consumer EVs, commercial EVs, grid storage, AI infrastructure. Whether that's a smart adaptation to a turbulent market or a quiet signal that the original EV ambition has been permanently downgraded is the question nobody is asking Monday morning in Warren.

The Ohio restart isn't the answer. It's the last line of a three-chapter story most readers never followed.

The real test is whether Tennessee's AI batteries and Indiana's Samsung hand-off generate enough revenue and technology returns to hold the broader strategy together until EV demand catches back up to where GM originally projected it would be by now.

Nobody clocking back in at Warren Monday morning is thinking about that. They're thinking about getting back to work.

Which is, honestly, the most reasonable possible response.

Ferrari’s first electric car sells for £30m

Andrea Vogt
Sun, August 16, 2026 

THE TELEGRAPH


The Maranello carmaker had the last laugh over critics of the car


Ferrari's first all-electric car was met with derision, mockery and an 8 per cent fall in the company share price when it was unveiled in May. But that hasn't dampened its sale price.

The Luce was described as "an aesthetic and technological insult to anyone who loves Ferrari" by a former company executive, as it was compared to a Nissan Leaf.

But the Maranello carmaker had the last laugh over the weekend as the first Luce in the run sold for $40m (£30m), making it the most expensive new car ever sold at auction.

The sale astonished the crowd at the Monterey Car Week in California, which had expected the "tailor-made" version of the car to go for around £750,000.

"Tailor-made" cars are one-of-a-kind vehicles customised to a buyer's precise specifications. The model, with chassis number 0, was designed with LoveFrom, the studio founded by Jony Ive, Apple's former design chief and a key figure behind the iPhone and iMac.

Rumours swirled that the purchaser of the car might have been a billionaire close to the project

The RM Sotheby's charity auction for the Luce, in mother-of-pearl white, saw bids start at $1m and race up, sometimes in increments as big as $5m.

It closed at $40m after a brief but intense bidding war in which a young man with a West Coast accent, chewing gum and wearing a black suit, yelled out "thirty," "thirty-five" and then "forty" between hushed conversation with someone on the other end of his iPhone.

"Going for the third and final time, here, only as can be done at RM Sotheby's, the car is sold," said Sholto Gilbertson, a British auctioneer, bringing the hammer down on the record-breaking sale.

No buyer's name has been disclosed, but rumours swirled on Sunday that the purchaser might have been a Silicon Valley billionaire close to the project, such as Apple's Tim Cook or entrepreneur Laurene Powell Jobs.

Proceeds will be donated to "elevating global education initiatives" via the Ferrari Foundation.

The backlash began almost immediately.

"Wow, 40 million for a washing machine with a Ferrari logo. Unbelievable," commented Fernando Sánchez, a Spanish investor, under the auction house's Instagram reel.

Regular versions of the Luce were on sale for £470,000. In May, at the unveiling, Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the company's former chairman, said the Luce "risks destroying the myth" of Ferrari, and even suggested it should be stripped of the company's prancing horse logo.

No buyer name has been disclosed for the buyer of the Ferrari Luce

Ferrari's marketing chief quit after the reaction to the company's first fully electric vehicle.

Enrico Galliera, a 16-year veteran of the supercar maker, has been replaced by Massimiliano Di Silvestre, BMW's former head of Italian operations, after the disastrous launch of the Luce.

But Benedetto Vigna, Ferrari's chief executive, has vigorously defended the Luce, saying the company is already receiving orders and deflected any comparison to cheaper electric cars, saying: "You have to see it and drive it to understand that it wasn't copied – not the interiors, not the exterior, not the performance."

The car is a four-door saloon with four electric motors and a 122kWh battery, which provide a top speed of 190mph. It can reach 62mph in just 2.5 seconds and has a range of 329 miles when fully charged.

Although a record sale for a new car, it is not the most expensive car ever sold.

In 2023, a vintage 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO was bought for £42m, and in January, a "unicorn" one-of-one 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Bianco Speciale sold for £32,855,797 to a mystery buyer.

The most expensive car ever sold at auction was a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR Coupé modelled on the race car that Sir Stirling Moss broke the Mille Miglia record in. That was sold for €135m (£115m) in 2022.

 

Trump touts $3 billion in critical minerals projects to counter China

Bloomberg News | August 7, 2026 |

US President Donald Trump. Credit: The White House | Flickr

President Donald Trump touted $3 billion in US investments in critical minerals mining at a meeting Friday with top industry executives aimed at weaning the US off supply chains dominated by China.

Trump said the projects would “create thousands of jobs and promote our economic stability and security,” at an event at the State Department. “We’re putting our miners back to work, and we’re reclaiming America’s rightful place as the minerals superpower of the world,” he added.

Trump said the investments included a $1.4 billion loan agreement with Sila Nanotechnologies Inc. from the Defense Department’s Office of Strategic Capital. Other investments include $400 million by the Pentagon to expand production in Australia of scandium, which is critical to aerospace and defense industries, and $150 million with Niron Magnetics Inc., a Minnesota rare-earths firm.

The Export-Import Bank is also working to provide more than $1 billion in financing for Ivanhoe Electric Inc.’s Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona, along with a $25 million investment to launch a graphite mine project in Alabama.

The president also hailed plans to spend over $180 million to bolster educational programs for the mining industry, saying it would “train the next generation of American miners.”

Trump said his efforts would ensure the US “is never again reliant on hostile foreign nations for the resources our country needs to dominate in the future.”

The president was expected to be joined by executives from prominent companies, including Rio Tinto Group, BHP Group and Freeport-McMoRan Inc., MP Materials Corp., USA Rare Earth Inc., Energy Fuels Inc., US Antimony Corp., Sunrise Energy Metals Ltd., and The Metals Company.

The event showcases administration efforts to spur US critical minerals development and processing ahead of a planned visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington in September. Trump said that under his administration domestic mines were reopening at a fast pace, including what he said was the first American rare-earth mine in more than 70 years and the construction of the first new aluminum smelter since 1980.

Despite a trade truce that eased export controls over critical minerals and magnets essential to a host of cutting edge industries, rare earths remain a source of tension between the world’s two largest economies. The US has sought to partner with domestic companies to build out a mine-to-magnet supply chain independent of China.

The federal government has already pledged more than $10 billion of investments in a bid to jump-start nascent US markets for rare earths and permanent magnets. The Pentagon kicked off the spending spree more than a year ago, announcing it would take a $400 million preferred equity stake in MP Materials — the sole domestic rare earths producer — and the US has since announced other projects the government is championing.

While the scale of the US critical minerals build-out is enormous, there have been serious challenges and slow progress in developing the domestic industry.

(By Joe Deaux and Jeff Mason)

Trump administration to back three critical mineral projects with $58 million in financing

Reuters | August 7, 2026 | 

(Image courtesy of The White House.)

The U.S. Export-Import Bank is lending $58 million to three critical-mineral companies as part of President ‌Donald Trump’s push to wean the country off Chinese supplies and bolster ‌American mining and processing, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The funding is timed to coincide with Trump’s ​meeting in Washington on Friday with executives from some of the world’s largest mining companies to underscore the country’s need for better supplies of minerals used to build weapons and electronics.

“Critical mineral security is national security,” said John Jovanovic, ExIm’s chairman, adding the funding ‌aims to “fortify our supply chains, ⁠restore crucial industries that support well-paying American jobs and safeguard everyday Americans from supply shocks.”

Westwater Resources will receive a $25 million loan for ⁠its Alabama graphite mine and processing facility. Graphite is the largest metal by volume used to build lithium-ion ​batteries.

The ​U.S. produces some so-called synthetic graphite from petroleum ​coke, a byproduct of oil ‌refining. Battery manufacturers typically prefer one version or the other, depending on a range of factors.

ExIm is also lending $25 million to privately held Global Advanced Metals to expand processing of tantalum and niobium, neither of which the U.S. mines, making it reliant on foreign supply. The company mines the metals in Australia and processes them in Pennsylvania.

Tantalum is primarily ‌used to make capacitors for smartphones, automobiles and ​other electronics, whereas niobium is used as an ​alloy to harden steel for pipelines ​and airplanes.

And 5E Advanced Materials will receive an $8 million loan to ‌boost production of boron, which last year ​was added to ​a list of minerals considered critical by the U.S. government. The metal is used in the nuclear energy industry as well as in body armor and ​other defense-related products.

The U.S. imports ‌most of its boron needs. 5E’s California boron project is slated to ​begin commercial production in 2028.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Washington and Ernest ​Scheyder in Houston; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Trump admin blocks tungsten, battery waste exports to boost US minerals supply

Reuters | August 6, 2026 |

Shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles. Stock image by Matt Gush.

The U.S. Commerce Department said on Thursday it will block exports of tungsten scrap and battery waste, part of a push to boost the domestic recycling industry and critical mineral production.

The move, which was expected, comes after President Donald Trump last week signed an order giving federal officials the power to limit the overseas shipment of scrap containing valuable critical minerals to China and other countries.

The order prohibits the export of so-called black mass, which is essentially shredded lithium-ion batteries, as well as scrap containing tungsten, a metal used to harden steel and used widely in defense applications.

The action is the latest in a broader U.S. push to reduce reliance on China, which dominates global processing of critical minerals used in everything from EV batteries to weapons systems. Washington has increasingly used export controls, tariffs and domestic incentives to try to rebuild a U.S. supply chain, as tensions with Beijing over minerals access have escalated.

The order, published in the Federal Register, goes into effect on August 27 and runs for one year, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said.

“It’s great to see the administration recognize the importance of recycling recoverable critical materials from scrap,” said Zubeyde Oysul, a critical minerals policy manager at SAFE, a Washington-based think tank.

Waivers may be issued on a case-by-case basis only if companies can show “undue hardship” or “irreparable harm,” according to the order.

The U.S. exports nearly 33,000 metric tons per month of electronic waste and other scrap, much of it filled with critical minerals that can be recycled, according to data from the environmental group Basel Action Network.

Those exports have long irked the U.S. recycling industry, which has said that keeping the material in the country could help Washington better meet its minerals production.

Still, the U.S. does not have enough capacity to recycle all the scrap it produces. Several recyclers have also faced economic challenges in the past 18 months, including Li-Cycle and Ascend Elements, both of which filed for bankruptcy.

Amermin, a privately held tungsten recycling firm, praised Thursday’s move but said the country needs to do more to increase its ability to handle scrap.

“This ban is a band-aid,” said Ryan McAdams, Amermin’s CEO. “It’s going to buy us more time, but we’ve got to start building up the infrastructure here stateside.”

Amermin last year received an $11.5 million grant from the Energy Department but has not yet received the funds. The company’s commercial recycling facility would have been opened at least six months ago if it had access to those funds, McAdams said.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Rio Tinto, BHP summoned to critical minerals meeting with Trump

Bloomberg News | August 6, 2026 

The North Portico of the White House in Washington, DC. Stock image.

The White House has invited top executives from the US critical minerals industry to a meeting Friday with President Donald Trump meant to demonstrate the administration’s commitment to wean the nation off supply chains dominated by China.

The event is designed to showcase efforts to help spur critical minerals development and processing, with plans to unveil a handful of a deals and memoranda of understanding, according to people familiar with the summit, who requested anonymity to provide details ahead of a formal announcement. 

Among those invited to the meeting are representatives from industry heavyweights including Rio Tinto Group, BHP Group and Freeport-McMoRan Inc., as well as participants from MP Materials Corp., USA Rare Earth Inc., Energy Fuels Inc., US Antimony Corp., Sunrise Energy Metals Ltd., and The Metals Company among others, the people said. 

Some companies are still determining whether they will attend in person and if so, which executives to send, according to the people familiar. Trump is set to be joined by leaders of his National Energy Dominance Council, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, executive director Jarrod Agen, as well as White House adviser David Copley.

The event has been in the works for weeks, though there’s been a rush to pull together final details in recent days, with a range of US government agencies tapped to participate, some of the people said.

Specifics on potential deals were not immediately available Thursday. Ahead of the session, White House officials asked government agencies to detail recently closed deals and MOUs that would help demonstrate momentum on the president’s critical minerals agenda, some of the people said.

A White House official said the administration is putting together a historic meeting of mining industry officials as the president advances measures to support critical mineral development. 

Trump has regularly summoned top executives from industries, including technology and energy, to showcase his economic priorities and press them to back portions of his agenda. 

Friday’s meeting comes more than a year after the US government launched a multi-billion critical minerals policy that’s embraced a new model of statecraft, with American taxpayers committing some $10 billion to build a so-called mine-to-magnet supply chain. The goal is ensuring robust US production of rare earths and critical products deemed essential to national security. 

The policy went into hyperdrive last year after China rattled global markets by implementing export controls on certain rare earth minerals and permanent magnets, which are critical to a host of industries and used in a wide array of products including, automobiles, wind turbines and defense applications.

(By Joe Deaux)

Sunrise Energy Metals’ scandium project gets $400M conditional loan from US Department of War  

Staff Writer | August 7, 2026 | 

Syerston project in New South Wales. Photo by Clean TeQ.

The Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) announced Friday a $400 million conditional loan commitment to Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX: SRL) to build out the company’s scandium operations in New South Wales, Australia. 

The company is backed by mining billionaire Robert Friedland, who said the Syerston project “will be the world’s first source of primary mine supply for scandium end-users”.   

Scandium is currently harvested through byproducts of other industrial or resource extraction processes. No primary mine-source scandium supply exists globally, and foreign competitors dominate the supply side, accounting for approximately 80% of global mining production and nearly 100% of scandium processing.  

With these funds, alongside private capital, Sunrise said it will develop a full scandium value chain, beginning with its primary mining operations at Syerston. Sunrise said it will build metallization and additive layer manufacturing capabilities to ensure Western alignment from mine to finished product.  

The financing will provide the Department with a right of first offer on Sunrise’s output, and the scandium produced by Sunrise would support the demand of US companies, including defense industrial base companies. 

“The contemplated Sunrise transaction marks a significant step in establishing supply chain resiliency for an increasingly critical mineral. This nearly $1 billion deal, bringing together public and private capital, would help address foreign dependencies in scandium supply and facilitate scandium’s use in critical defense and commercial applications,” said David A. Lorch, Director of the Office of Strategic Capital David A. Lorch said in a news release.  

Claims of a China-free scandium supply chain are also being tested in the private sector. San Jose-based Bloom Energy is the West’s largest consumer of scandium oxide, using an estimated 30 tonnes in 2025—roughly half of global consumption—according to short-seller Hunterbrook Media.  

On July 8, Hunterbrook alleged that Chinese scandium oxide was still reaching Bloom through Thailand, Japan, and South Korea. In a July 9 filing, Bloom described the report’s financial claims as false and misleading and rejected its conclusions about the company’s scandium sourcing.  

The USGS estimates that global production totalled about 80 tonnes in 2025. Meanwhile, Sunrise Energy Metals’ Syerston project in New South Wales, designed to produce 60 tonnes annually and one of several proposed non-Chinese sources, has yet to begin construction.

Niron Magnetics lands conditional $150M Department of War funding commitment 

Staff Writer | August 7, 2026 | 

Niron’s plated magnets. Supplied image.

Niron Magnetics announced Friday a conditional commitment from the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) for a direct loan of up to $150 million with a 20-year term to support construction and equipment for the company’s advanced manufacturing plant in Sartell, Minnesota. 

The Minneapolis – based company is working towards commercializing the world’s first rare-earth-free Iron Nitride permanent magnets, it said. 

The financing would accelerate domestic production of Niron’s proprietary Iron Nitride permanent magnets, which do not require rare earth materials, and would expand domestic production of advanced permanent magnets. 

The Niron conditional commitment was announced by President Trump at the American Mining Industry gathering in Washington D.C. and is intended to advance Niron’s commercialization and scaling of rare-earth-free Iron Nitride magnets.  

Iron Nitride technology was developed at the University of Minnesota and scaled over the last 13 years, resulting in technology that provides manufacturers with an alternative to rare earth magnets. 

Permanent magnets are essential components in defense systems, data centers, industrial automation, consumer electronics, robotics, aerospace applications, and advanced electric motors. Today, most rare earth permanent magnets are produced in Asian markets, creating strategic vulnerabilities for U.S. manufacturers. 

Niron’s supply chain has no rare earth materials, offshore separation, or heavy rare earth exposure, it said. 

“This conditional commitment recognizes the importance of Niron’s rare-earth-free approach and the urgency of building domestic manufacturing capacity for a technology the world increasingly depends on,” Niron CEO Jonathan Rowntree said in a news release. 

“We are accelerating commercialization of an American-developed magnet technology that offers manufacturers a domestic path to high-performance permanent magnets built without rare earth materials.” 

The conditional financing is intended to accelerate the buildout of Niron’s first commercial-scale rare-earth-free permanent magnet manufacturing plant scheduled to be operational in 2027. 

The 287,000-square-foot Sartell plant would bring material-to-magnet production under one roof and produce up to 1,500 tons of rare-earth-free permanent magnets annually, the company said, adding that the plant is the first step in Niron’s modular manufacturing platform, with final site selection underway for a subsequent U.S. manufacturing plant capable of producing 10,000 tons of annual capacity that is expected to break ground in 2028. 

 

Lockheed seeks US mineral supplies after Trump supply-chain push, sources say

Reuters | August 4, 2026 | 

Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II. Stock image by peterfz30.

Lockheed Martin is in talks to buy supplies of two critical minerals from U.S. ​mines, two sources familiar with the discussions said, as President Donald Trump pressures defense contractors to cut reliance on China.

The world’s largest defense contractor is negotiating ‌with NioCorp Developments (NASDAQ: NB) for supply of scandium, and Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A TECK.B, NYSE: TECK) and 5N Plus (TSX: VNP) for supply of germanium, both of which are used in military equipment ranging from aircraft components to infrared sensors, the sources said.

The deals would mark a significant step in the U.S. push to build domestic mineral supply chains, but face hurdles: Chinese suppliers have long offered cheaper prices, and U.S. mining and processing capacity remains limited.

Lockheed makes the F-35 Lightning II fighter ​jet, Patriot interceptor missiles and other weaponry for the U.S. government. As China has tightened controls on critical minerals exports in recent years, Trump has pressured Lockheed and its ​peers to support U.S. mines with long-term supply deals.

Last month, he signed an executive order making it harder for defense contractors to obtain waivers that ⁠had allowed them for years to buy minerals from China and other prohibited foreign suppliers.

That order has highlighted how far behind U.S. miners and processors are in their race to match ​China’s market dominance, even as dozens of U.S. projects for a range of minerals are under development, Reuters reported last week.

Colorado-based NioCorp Developments has signed a preliminary deal to supply Lockheed with ​15 metric tons per year of scandium, one of the 17 rare earths that can be used to make lightweight, corrosion-resistant alloys for aircraft, according to a source familiar with the agreement and details seen by Reuters. These have not been previously reported.

NioCorp will supply the metal from its Nebraska mine, slated to open by 2028 with annual production of 100 metric tons.

The agreement would need to be finalized, although the ​two companies have an existing relationship as part of a Pentagon-funded research program.

The contracted volume would be roughly a quarter of global scandium demand, which the U.S. Geological Survey estimates at ​about 60 metric tons and rising.

“Both companies recognize how important scandium has become to the future of American defense technology,” said Mark Smith, NioCorp’s CEO.

Lockheed said it appreciated “the work NioCorp is doing to establish ‌a domestic source ⁠of scandium.”

The U.S. has not mined scandium since 1969. Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) is the only North American scandium producer, with capacity to produce roughly nine metric tons annually.

Germanium negotiations

Separately, Lockheed is in talks with Teck Resources for a supply of germanium, used to make infrared sensors and other military equipment, a second person familiar with those negotiations said.

Teck mines and produces a zinc and germanium concentrate from its Red Dog mine in Alaska. That concentrate is then smelted in British Columbia and the two metals are separated.

Teck does not break out its annual germanium production but ​has called itself the largest North American producer ​and fourth-largest globally. The USGS estimates that ⁠global germanium consumption is roughly 60 metric tons annually and rising.

The U.S. imports more than half of its germanium needs.

Lockheed is also in germanium supply talks with Quebec-based 5N Plus (TSX: VNP), which earlier this year received Pentagon funding to process the metal from recycled feedstock in Utah, ​the second source added.

“What Lockheed basically wants is a long-term supply chain security,” according to the second source. “Because they are under pressure, ​so they really want to ⁠know if the supply is coming from China or elsewhere.”

Negotiations with both Teck and 5N have been going on for more than a year. Pricing and the length of the contracts have been sticking points, according to the source.

Representatives for 5N were not immediately available to comment. Teck declined to comment on specific commercial agreements, but said it has agreed to work with the Canadian ⁠government to increase ​germanium processing in British Columbia.

Asked about the germanium discussions, Lockheed said it continuously assesses “the global critical minerals supply ​chain to ensure access to materials that support our customers’ missions.”

Chinese critical minerals prices have for years been cheaper than those from Western sources due to differences in mining practices, regulatory standards and other factors. Reuters reported earlier ​this year that Western governments are trying to set regional minerals prices free from Chinese interference.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Houston and Divya Rajagopal in Toronto; Editing by Veronica Brown and Sanjeev Miglani)

US defense agency cancels plan to buy $300 million of lithium

Bloomberg News | August 4, 2026 | 

Stock image.

The US Department of Defense has canceled a tender to purchase lithium for its strategic stockpiles, in another apparent sign of the challenges it faces in trying to bolster supplies of critical minerals. 

The Defense Logistics Agency dropped a tender for almost 36 million pounds, about 16,000 tons, of battery-grade lithium carbonate in a contract worth as much as $300 million, according to a notice on its website dated Monday. The DLA didn’t give any reason for the delay. An email sent to the department out of office hours didn’t immediately receive a reply.

Critical minerals have become a political priority for the US in order to slash reliance on main supplier China. Prices of lithium carbonate, used in electric vehicles and energy storage systems, have surged nearly 20% so far this year in China and remain volatile.

The DLA, responsible for managing the National Defense Stockpile that secures metals for US military needs, last year canceled a tender to buy cobalt, a metal used in industries including batteries and aerospace.

The lithium tender was announced on July 2 with an original deadline of July 17, which was extended twice. It asked suppliers to propose fixed prices for supplies over five years and said the government was intending to spend between $1 million and $300 million on the contract. 

(By Annie Lee)