Critical Minerals

• Mining Reporters (11 Aug 2026): Comex copper touched $6.7005/lb, 0.4 cents under the $6.7045/lb record set on 5 Aug; LME three-month copper was about $14,195.50/t. Copper was up nearly 18% in 2026 and had roughly doubled over 12 months.
• The Gresik smelter that processes Grasberg ore was suspended after a boiler leak on 8 Aug; Grasberg itself is still recovering from the September 2025 mudslide and is not targeted to reach full production until end-2027.
• LME copper warehouse stocks fell 4,675 t to 218,300 t.

• The IEA released its Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 on 16 July 2026, headlined: supply concentration, export restrictions and declining investment put critical mineral security at risk.
• IEA reported that prices rebounded in 2025 and early 2026 after years of decline, investment fell 9% in 2025, and refining concentration rose for most minerals (via press coverage of the report).
• As summarised by Skillings Mining (18 Jul 2026, not verified against the IEA text): lithium demand growth to 2040 of eightfold, a copper structural deficit of about 25% through 2035, and $6.5 trillion of downstream output at risk by 2030 from expanded Chinese controls on gallium, germanium and graphite.

• After the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea, China suspended its 9 Oct 2025 expansion of rare-earth export controls for one year, to 10 Nov 2026 (Mining.com and Mining Technology, 27 Apr 2026).
• The April 2025 licensing regime for seven medium and heavy rare earths (samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, yttrium) and related magnets stays in force (Mining Technology, 27 Apr 2026).
• GlobalData (2025 figures): China produced 270 kt of about 390 kt REO-equivalent mined (69.2%) and processes up to 90% of rare earths. No confirmed extension beyond 10 Nov 2026 was found.

Reported futures data (Reuters via secondary outlets): the most active Guangzhou lithium carbonate contract closed near 104,740 yuan/t on 12 Oct 2026, about half the 209,880 yuan peak of 13 May 2026, yet above year-earlier levels. The 80% crash of 2022-2025 has therefore been partly reversed, which does not change the structural argument about supply timelines.

Project Vault, a roughly $12 billion US strategic critical-minerals reserve (about $10 billion EXIM financing plus about $2 billion private capital, per law-firm analyses), was announced in early February 2026. Separately, the Pentagon's equity stake in MP Materials is reported to include a $110/kg NdPr price floor. Commerce's Section 232 critical-minerals review found heavy reliance on imported processed minerals threatens national security (reported conclusion 24 Oct 2025); reports say broader price-floor plans may be scaled back.

Not refreshed: current refining-share percentages (kept at 2025 values), EU Critical Raw Materials Act progress, battery gigafactory count, ore-grade and recycling figures, 2030-2035 copper supply-demand chart values, and the late-October 2026 lithium and copper spot prices.

• Minerals are the transition's fuel. Every EV, panel and data centre starts as rock.
• Mining is not refining. The geology is spread worldwide; the processing is not. That gap is the story.
• Every number is sourced. Demand curves and shares from the IEA and USGS, dated.
• Prices deceive. Boom-bust cycles hide the structural squeeze underneath.

Source: IEA Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025.

A critical mineral is not a rare one. It is a mineral the economy cannot pause without, supplied through a door one hand can close.

Criticality = importance x concentration. Neither alone earns the name.

1. 01 MineOre is extracted: years of permits, decades of capex.
2. 02 RefineRaw ore becomes battery- or magnet-grade material.
3. 03 ProcessMaterials become cathodes, magnets, components.
4. 04 ManufactureComponents become EVs, turbines, electronics.

Source: IEA (2025).

Demand that doubles in five years is being served by supply that takes fifteen to respond: the structural mismatch behind every price spike.

A quadrant map of supply risk (vertical) against economic importance (horizontal), with quadrants labelled Niche worries, The danger zone, Comfortable and Watch closely. Rare earths, graphite, cobalt and lithium sit in the danger zone (top right), with rare earths and graphite highest on supply risk. Nickel sits near the midline and copper sits far right but lower on supply risk. Aluminium sits lower right, in the watch-closely quadrant.

Source: analysis after EU/US criticality frameworks.

1. 2010First shot: China halts rare earths to Japan.
2. 2022IRA: America subsidises its own chain.
3. 2023Gallium & germanium: China restricts chip metals.
4. 2024Graphite controls: battery anodes join the list.
5. 2025Rare-earth squeeze: automakers face stoppages; Oct 2025 expansion paused to 10 Nov 2026.

Source: Public records.

A line chart of a lithium price index (2020 = 100) from 2020 to 2025: the price rises to an 8x spike in 2022, then falls more than 80% by 2024-2025. Prices then rebounded in 2026 (see What has changed).

Source: Industry price indices (2020-25).

The lithium crash didn't cancel the shortage: it caused the next one, by starving the mines that 2030 will need.

Low prices today cancel projects that take a decade to build. The bust plants the seeds of the boom.

Each needs a supply chain of lithium, nickel, graphite and copper locked years in advance. The factories are the easy half; the feedstock contracts behind them are where the real competition happens.

Every EV motor, wind turbine and precision missile needs them. When Beijing restricted exports in 2025 (the October expansion is paused until 10 November 2026), automakers faced production halts within weeks: a live demonstration of what leverage means.

• Tolerate the mess. Refining is dirty; China accepted the environmental cost others outsourced.
• Subsidise the scale. Cheap credit and power made Chinese processing unbeatable.
• Price out rivals. Zero-fee smelting today buys monopoly tomorrow.
• Integrate downstream. Refining fed batteries fed EVs: the whole chain, in-house.

Source: Industry data; IEA (2025).

Everything in the electric age (every wire, motor, grid and data centre) needs copper. And copper is quietly running short.

Lithium gets the headlines; copper carries the current. Its gap is the harder one to close.

Source: USGS; IEA (2025).

If lithium is the transition's headline, copper is its bloodstream: invisible, everywhere, and much harder to replace.

Chemistries can route around cobalt or nickel. Nothing routes around conductivity.

• Subsidise. IRA credits and EU acts pull mines and refineries onshore.
• Stockpile. Strategic reserves for magnets and battery metals.
• Diversify. Friend-shoring deals across Australia, Africa, the Americas.
• Substitute & recycle. Sodium batteries, magnet-free motors, urban mining.

Source: US IRA; EU Critical Raw Materials Act.

1. Does China escalate export controls? Each round accelerates the West's response.
2. Do copper projects get funded? FIDs now decide the 2035 balance.
3. Does ex-China refining scale? The only structural fix that matters.
4. Do new chemistries dent demand? Sodium and LFP shift the lithium curve.
5. Does recycling industrialise? Urban mining moving from pilot to plant.

1. A materials dependency replaces a fuel one: the trade is good; the transition is exposed.
2. Refining beats mining: control of chemistry outranks control of rock.
3. Copper is the master constraint: watch it above everything.
4. Cycles mask structure: price crashes fund tomorrow's shortages.
5. The 2020s are the gap years: insurance is being bought for a decade away.

The 20th century fought over the fuels that moved machines. The 21st is quietly contesting the materials machines are made of, and the winning move happened in refineries, twenty years before anyone was watching.

• IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025.
• J.P. Morgan Research, lithium and battery-metal demand outlook (2025-26).
• USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries.
• Industry price indices, lithium carbonate, copper (2020-25).
• Company disclosures, miners' capex and project timelines.
• Government policy: IRA, EU Critical Raw Materials Act, export-control filings.
• Figures marked 'estimate' or 'scenario' are compilations of the above.