Canada As A Severe Minerals Refiner Is Globally Beside the level

Andrew Topf

With over two an extended time of journalistic abilities working in newspapers, swap publications and as a mining reporter, Andrew Topf is a seasoned writer focusing on…

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• UAE commits $70 billion to Canada in a landmark deal spanning energy, AI, logistics, mining, and other strategic sectors.
• Canada eyes extreme minerals independence, announcing a $1 billion mission to enlarge home refining capability.
• Ottawa ramps up extreme mineral initiatives via G7 partnerships and home incentives, nonetheless with handiest one uncommon earths mine and restricted processing infrastructure, Canada remains some distance on the support of China.

Canadian Prime Minister Designate Carney has supreme returned from a visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he extracted a $70 billion investment pledge from the Gulf whisper.

The funding is anticipated to incorporate energy, AI logistics, mining and other strategic industries.

Bored to death with Donald Trump’s tariffs, Canada’s new authorities is on a mission to double non-US exports over the next decade and unleash $1 trillion in new investment in Canada over five years, in accordance with a Nov. 21 press birth.

On the side of the UAE announcement, Carney said Ottawa is engaged on a $1-billion mission aimed at expanding extreme minerals processing capability in Canada.

“I’m overjoyed that an settlement valued over $1 billion is within the strategy of being finalized,” Carney said in a speech to the Canada-U.A.E. Trade Council lined by CBC Files.

“[It] will enlarge extreme minerals processing capability in Canada, developing jobs, boosting [the] long-term supply of minerals a must need to energy applied sciences and superior manufacturing. More on that soon,” he said.

Rhetoric aside, where does Canada, a moderately little nation in phrases of mineral refining capability, stand in phrases of developing ample capability to change into impartial of China, the leading refiner of extreme minerals? Is Canada even globally connected?

In line with the International Energy Company, China has a median market portion of 70% for 19 out of 20 key minerals. For uncommon earth functions, it accounts for 91% of world refining manufacturing.

In 2024, China held a 96% portion of world subtle graphite, 78% of the field’s subtle cobalt, 70% of its lithium, and 44% of its copper.

Regardless of an extended mining ancient past, Canada is in most cases handiest a foremost miner of two commodities. It is the field’s largest producer and exporter of potash and the 2d-largest producer and exporter of uranium. While Canada is among the tip 10 producers of cobalt, graphite, lithium and nickel — all now regarded as extreme minerals — it accounts for handiest 5% of the world mine manufacturing of every of those minerals.

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Staying with mine manufacturing for the minute, Australia accounts for 37% of total world lithium manufacturing. Indonesia is the tip nickel miner at 59% of the field total, China mines 69% of the field’s uncommon earth functions and seventy nine% of its graphite, and the DRC accounts for roughly three-quarters of world cobalt mine manufacturing. (Mineral Commodities Summary 2025, by the US Geological Inquire)

China’s come-monopoly on extreme minerals processing affords it extreme heft in swap kin. In most modern months, Beijing has leveraged its space to tighten export restrictions on minerals, along side uncommon earths, graphite, antimony, gallium and germanium.

Canada has established home infrastructure for processing minerals equivalent to aluminum and uranium, and has about a smelters and refineries for copper, nickel and zinc. However for the main energy-transition metals worship lithium and uncommon earth functions, refining capability is for the time being minimal or non-existent.

Canada’s first uncommon earths refinery used to be opened in 2024 in Saskatchewan. At elephantine operation, the CAD$74 million facility is anticipated to earn 400 tonnes of NdPr metals per one year, archaic to accumulate permanent magnets.

By comparability, China in 2024 produced 83,697 tonnes of NdPr metal.

The United States is the main export vacation whisper for 52% of all Canadian mineral exports and 63% of extreme minerals. The latter are concentrated within the upstream stages of the payment chain, that technique that extra processing in most cases occurs after export.

Canada completely has ambitions to develop its extreme minerals supply chain, from mining to refining to the make of cease products. The Canadian Mineral Minerals Formula used to be published by the Canadian authorities in 2022, underscoring the must receive and diversify supply chains.

Canada’s extreme minerals record contains 34 minerals deemed a need to personal for financial or nationwide security.

In line with a recent portion by HillNotes, Securing extreme minerals supply chains entails, among other measures, identifying the parties spirited about extracting and processing extreme minerals in this nation… While out of the country voice investment plays a a need to personal characteristic in supporting this sector, concerns personal been raised about out of the country possession of those sources.

Maps embedded into the article describe that 30 of Canada’s 55 extreme mineral mines are owned by firms whose parent firm is based mostly utterly in Canada. For the opposite 25 mines, their parent firms are based mostly utterly in Brazil, the US and Switzerland. The Tanco mine in Manitoba, which produces cesium, tantalum and lithium, is 100% owned by a Chinese firm.

Canada is home to forty five superior graphite, lithium and REE initiatives. Thirty-one are owned by a Canadian-domiciled firm.

Completely eight of the 32 extreme mineral processing centers are owned by Canadian firms. The change 24 are owned by parent firms that reside within the UK, the US, Switzerland, Brazil, France, Germany and Luxembourg.

On the cease of October the Canadian authorities launched the main round of initiatives below a G7 extreme minerals manufacturing alliance envisioned as a counterweight to China’s dominance within the field.

In line with World Files, the 25 initiatives embody offtake agreements for a Quebec graphite mine and investments to scale up a uncommon earth functions refinery in Ontario.

Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Matawinie mine come Montreal secured settlement to assemble a part of the mine’s future manufacturing from the federal authorities, Panasonic and Traxys, a Luxembourg mining firm.

Canada shall be backing a Norwegian firm’s knowing to construct a synthetic graphite plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, with as a lot as $500 million in doable financing from Export Construction Canada.

Graphite is archaic within the anodes of electrical vehicle batteries. Vianode from Norway said in January it has signed a multi-billion-buck supply contend with GM for its electrical autos.

World Files said A Ucore Rare Metals facility in Kingston, Ont., used to be also conditionally favorite for as a lot as $36 million in federal money to abet scale up its processing of two uncommon earth functions — samarium, archaic to accumulate warmth-resistant magnets in nuclear reactors, and gadolinium, a a part of nuclear reactors and MRIs.

The refinery is anticipated to birth manufacturing in 2026.

World request for extreme minerals is anticipated to amplify significantly, with some estimates suggesting the energy sector’s needs would possibly per chance develop sixfold by 2040. Will Canada be in a position to meet the project by rising its home mining and refining capability?

The numbers are daunting. World Files cites a report the Canadian Climate Institute that estimated Canada would wish capital investments within the fluctuate of $30 billion by 2040 to meet home request alone.

One space of doable growth is uncommon earth functions.

“Canada has one of the main largest identified reserves and sources of uncommon earths on this planet,” the supervisor of authorities kin on the Saskatchewan Analysis Council said in 2022.

The USGS quantifies that with an estimated 830,000 tonnes of uncommon-earth oxide the same reserves in 2024. Study this to China’s 44 million tonnes and Brazil’s 21 million tonnes.

One other CBC Files article says it’s estimated that Canada has bigger than 14 million tonnes of uncommon earth oxides, with 21 mining initiatives in diversified stages of style, from exploration to resource estimation. The initiatives are in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta and in Saskatchewan, in accordance with Natural Resources Canada.

However Canada handiest has one producing uncommon earths mine, Nechalacho within the Northwest Territories. The nation’s first REE mine is owned by Cheetah Resources, a subsidiary of A must-personal Metals, which processes the ore in Saskatchewan earlier than being sent to Norway for separation.

China has thousands of mines, and whereas the assortment of uncommon earth mines is no longer publicly available within the market, it hosts the largest REE mine on this planet, the Bayan Obo mine in Inner Mongolia.

In 2024 China’s uncommon earths manufacturing reached 270,000 tonnes, which used to be bigger than two-thirds of the field’s total, studies Investing Files Community and Statista.

Canada’s REE manufacturing does no longer even register on the USGS’s 2024 mine manufacturing table.

Whatever the authorities’s easiest intentions, Canada has an extended technique to mosey in every the mining and refining of extreme minerals if it ever needs to change into connected — no longer to impart cut loose of dependence on China.

By Andrew Topf for Oilprice.com

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