Pilbara Mineralsrise from a $1 million microcap to a $14 billion lithium giant that is forecast to report a $2.4 billion net profit in August.’s rebuild of Lynas from a $111 million struggler in mid-2015 to a $7 billion company that is globally recognised as the most strategically important rare earths producer outside China.
The rally in Azure shares also validates the faith shown by Chilean lithium giant Sociedad Quimica Y Minera, whichDespite the extraordinary amount of wealth created by the critical minerals sector, Tribeca Investment Partners portfolio manager Todd Warren said many of the stocks had come back to earth this year as electric vehicle sales had been slightly softer in China than expected.
The list of 33 companies is far from exhaustive; it does not include big diversified miners like BHP and Rio Tinto, which collectively produce minerals on the US “critical” list such as nickel, zircon, scandium and aluminium.and Aeris Resources; the energy transition is expected to stoke greater demand for copper, but the red metal is not listed as “critical” by governments in Australia or the US.
“It may be tempting given all the hype to try and quickly hit a winner, investors need to first fully understand the ground they are playing on,” he said.Mr Chalmers is the technical director of gold explorer Alkane Resources and co-chairman of Toronto-based industry association the Critical Minerals Institute.
Mr Chalmers said that promise would prove true for some ionic clay projects, but at many others the rare earth elements would be trapped in mineral structures very difficult to break down, and therefore expensive to produce.“Companies need to do a lot of work studying and testing their deposit to clearly understand how much of its ionic, colloid or mineral before investors should get too excited by announcements about the size of a deposit a company says it has found,” he warned.
“In rare earths you are reliant on a price coming out of China, while in graphite, goodness knows what the price is.