If it isn't already abundantly clear, countries like China and India will secure as many pounds of uranium as they can
Case in point: "We would buy as much (uranium) as Cameco can produce” Patnaik, India’s high commissioner to Canada, told reporters"
U prices will keep rising
Sulphur/2
A lot of noise being made at the moment about sulphur prices and their impact on the long-term fundamentals of certain mining, metals and downstream projects.
For me, this is all hot air.
Why? Sulphur is not actually that difficult to find or produce. It's just that, over the last fifty years, the industry found a quite cheap source of sulphur (from oil and gas) and started to come to rely on it.
But, before that, sulphur - and sulphuric acid BTW - was produced primarily from roasting of pyrite.
And, in my view, it could easily be produced by that method again. Producing sulphur and sulphuric acid from pyrite roasting would cost in the range of US$250-600/t for sulphur. Now that wasn't economic in most regions with sulphur at US$250-300/t before this, but certainly could be economic at current prices. Another caveat - it's a pretty low carbon-intensity method as well.
And, let's not forget, sulphur prices have been trending upwards in recent years as demand for sulphuric acid increases and output from oil refining plants decreases. Probably, before this, they were on the cusp of being economic for pyrite roasting in some parts of the world.
So who's to say that we wouldn't be going back to pyrite roasting anyway as a source of sulphur for sulphuric acid?
And note that there are considerable pyrite sources in Europe (Iberian pyrite belt, anyone?), China, Australia, Canada and LatAm if we did need to go back to pyrite as a source of sulphur. Sure, there's a cost associated with building a pyrite roasting plant - probably US$300-500m capex for mine and plant for a project producing 200Ktpa of contained sulphur as sulphuric acid, but for the security to run your own domestic industry? That's priceless.
So yes, sulphur prices in some parts of the world have spiked to over US$1000/t. Does that mean that they will stay at that level in the medium to longer term? Absolutely not, in my view. If we need it, the resource is there. It's always been there. Could it take 12-18 months to come into production? Yes. It will probably take less time to mobilise stockpiles of sulphur sitting in the Canadian West at the moment.
Bottom line: The world will not run out of sulphur and yes - prices have spiked, but these price levels are not long run prices and people planning and valuing operations that use sulphuric acid shouldn't assume that they are.
A sign of late #Lithium Spring: Marginal assets coming back online. This one certainly qualifies. It likely won’t be long before we hear about “those with the rock winning.” The real question is, were any lessons learned in the last two cycles? From reading X, it appears “No.”
Lithium has been trading in a range for most of this year. Is this finally a breakout on the GFEX? It's a seasonally strong time of the year for lithium demand so it could very well be the next leg up in this cycle.
Geely, the giant on BYD’s heels, isn’t promising solid-state “someday” — it’s producing one in 2026. #LMFP all-solid-state, ~15% higher energy density, vehicle-tested, in-house. This is how China wins: incremental gains, scaled fast. Not hype. Execution.
https://t.co/oHS0voAJxw
Have #lithium exposure in your portfolio?
“The ESS sector has entered a period of explosive growth, and this trend is expected to continue into 2026 ... AI computing and data centres, new power consumption scenarios, are driving a constant increase in demand.”
Kazatomprom has just quietly admitted that their post-peak steady state production potential is expected to be around 10Mlbs U3O8/year lower than previously assumed.
The world suddenly needs one more tier 1 scale mine to ramp up in mid 2030s.
This is the biggest news in uranium so far this year.
GLN completes Phase 1 at HMW, a major step toward production.
Commissioning now underway, ~10,000t LCE brine in place and first lithium chloride targeted in 2026.
A key milestone in GLN's transition to lithium production.
Read more: https://t.co/bdYlWyLwJF