Some interesting reading from 2021 August:
From Zijin Mining to Rio Tinto's traditional mining giants to embrace new energy has become a global trend?
Aug 3, 2021 16:06
Source:
Liu Rui of the Financial Union
Recently, Chen Jinghe, chairman of domestic mining giant Zijin Mining, announced that he would develop new energy and new materials resources, including lithium mines. Zijin's shares rose more than 7% at one point on Monday. The company issued an announcement immediately after the opening, clarifying that "the company does not have a specific time schedule and specific project arrangements." On Tuesday, Zijin Mining shares showed a correction of more than 3 percent.
Although the company has clarified, it does not deny that the company is ready to enter the lithium mining industry. In fact, in the era of energy conservation and emission reduction and traditional mineral demand is close to saturation, many traditional mining giants around the world have begun to consider the transformation to lithium, nickel, cobalt and other new energy-related minerals.
Traditional minerals are out of date? Global giants are considering turning
Last Tuesday, Rio Tinto, the world's largest iron ore maker, said it would invest $2.4 billion in the Jadar lithium borate project in Serbia to produce battery-grade lithium carbonate. In addition to lithium, the project will also produce borates, which can be used to produce solar panels and wind turbines.
The company expects the project to be put into production on a large scale in 2026 and to reach its maximum capacity in 2029, with an estimated annual capacity of 58000 tons of lithium carbonate, 160000 tons of boric acid and 255000 tons of sodium sulfate. The project will make Rio Tinto the largest lithium supplier in Europe for at least the next 15 years, and will also make Rio Tinto one of the top 10 lithium suppliers in the world.
Rio Tinto is not the only mining giant to shift to new energy minerals. Last month, BHP also announced an important agreement with Tesla to mine and refine nickel from its mines in Western Australia to supply Tesla. The president of BHP Billiton said bluntly that "the era of electric cars has come faster than expected", so the speed of the company's transformation will be greatly accelerated.
In fact, among the major miners in the world, with the exception of Glencore, other miners have pulled out of the coal business or are in the process of withdrawing from the coal business.
The growth momentum of lithium ore far exceeds that of traditional minerals.
Demand for lithium will surge from about 400000 tons last year to about 2 million tons by 2030, and is likely to be in short supply by 2026, forcing a surge in lithium prices, according to Bloomberg NEF.
At the same time, the momentum of demand growth for traditional minerals is weakening. In the case of iron ore, for example, Bloomberg NEF expects China's iron ore use to reach the level of developed countries in the next five years, when China's demand for steel will gradually slow.
In addition, in the future, it is a global consensus to reduce energy consumption and environmental protection. In the process of mining and processing of traditional minerals, it needs to consume a lot of energy and pollute the environment, which means that the exploitation of large quantities of minerals will be gradually reduced in the future.
With the gradual promotion of waste recycling around the world, this will further gradually curb the market demand for mineral mining. In fact, some minerals have shifted in this direction. At present, most of the world's lead does not come from underground mining, but is recovered from car batteries and processed and reused.
Of course, as there are still some technical difficulties in the process of purchasing, sorting and separating waste and refining it, there will always be a need to extract metal minerals from underground. But unless India can become a new industrial power like China in the future, global consumption of traditional minerals such as coal and iron may now be close to an all-time peak.
Traditional mining giant "shipwreck U-turn"?
In the current era of the decline of traditional minerals and the sudden rise of new energy minerals, there is another problem on the road to the transformation of traditional mining giants: compared with traditional mining metals such as copper, iron and gold, the market scale of new energy minerals such as lithium ore is too small.
In the current global mineral resources, crude oil alone accounts for more than half of the total mineral resources value, if you add natural gas, it is equivalent to 2% of the global mineral resources value, plus coal to reach 80% of the total mineral resources value. Gold, copper, iron and aluminum each account for about 4% of the value of global mineral resources, while all other minority minerals add up to 4% or 5%.
If all the mineral values of lithium, cobalt, rare earths, industrial diamonds and uranium in the world add up, it would not cover the revenue that Rio Tinto received from its iron ore project in Australia. Even if the production capacity and prices of rare metals such as lithium mines increase significantly in the future, they will only be a drop in the ocean compared to traditional bulk minerals.
Compared with some smaller lithium miners, the current performance of the global mining giants still depends largely on traditional minerals, which makes them face a "difficult turnaround" situation in the process of transformation.
For example, according to recent data, Rio Tinto has a total turnover of more than $45 billion a year, and about 82% of its net profit comes from iron ore, and even at the record lithium mine record price in 2017, Rio's newly planned Jadar project with an annual lithium capacity of 58000 tons is unlikely to generate more than $1.5 billion in revenue-which means only normal iron ore price fluctuations. It is also enough to overwhelm the impact of Jadar projects on the company's profits.
The same is true of Zijin Mining Company. According to Zijin Mining's financial report, the company's revenue in 2020 was 171.5 billion yuan, and its profits basically came from traditional mineral businesses such as gold, copper, zinc (lead) and iron, accounting for 20.83%, 52%, 8.43% and 18.74% of the company's gross profit, respectively. even if the lithium mining industry is really laid out in the future, the impact on the company's actual performance may be limited.
