As much of the world aims to move toward a greener economy, some companies are trying to position themselves to deliver the resources needed for such energy transition.
“We’re not looking to have a problem in five to 10 years. We are looking to have a big problem in two or three years,” he said.Dow Jones: What is TechMet doing? What is its mission? That’s a dislocation that we haven’t seen for any set of natural resources since the impact of the industrial revolution on demand for coal and iron. It’s really epic and very, very daunting.
We received direct equity investment a year and a bit ago from the DFC [the U.S. development finance institution], who are now a major shareholder of TechMet. That remains the only time in history that the U.S. government has taken a direct equity interest in a metals and mining company. In the context of how our industry has to transform, that’s tiny, but at least it’s a start. But we need that times 500.
The big players, the battery manufacturers, the automakers, have realized this is an area that they have to engage in order to be competitive, grow and succeed. But, like the U.S. government, they haven’t quite figured out how, and they got a lot of work to do to come to the realization that they’re going to have to be exposed financially to production in order to have preferential access to product.
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