The foundation of the last metals supercycle (2002 - 2011) was the rapid industrialisation of China… new cities, skyscrapers, railways, cars, power grids and the mass creation of a new middle class. Back then, it was a DEMAND story. The supercycle we are in today, is bigger, more global… and what makes it different is that it’s a SUPPLY story. The economies that will be left behind are those that are unable to secure their own critical minerals supply chain. The statement made in this article by Canada’s Natural Resources Minister, Tim Hodgson, comes after @BloombergNEF’s forecast that copper needs $332 BILLION of new mine investment to avoid a deficit starting in 2028… otherwise we face a shortfall of about 20 million tonnes (44% of demand) by 2050. We are in discussions with other authoritative sources that tell us that the @Bloomberg estimate is significantly too conservative. We will bring attention to these studies when they are published. New mines take decades and decades to find, permit, finance AND THEN build. One major obstacle for projects, especially those located in western economies, is permitting. Unfortunately, there is no quick fix... and permitting should not be rushed. At least, the growing panic for metals is forcing into public debate the topic of where ON EARTH these metals will come from. As they say at the Colorado School of Mines: Earth first... we will mine the other planets later. financialpost.com/commoditie…

A modern jet engine is a cocktail of different alloys, compounds and superalloys using many of the little-known critical elements across the periodic table. These critical elements are the backbone of our modern, high-tech industries, especially in aerospace and defence… and because they take years to develop, they cannot simply be replaced with something else overnight. The yttrium compound used in jet engines is called yttria-stabilized zirconia (yttrium oxide combined with zirconium dioxide), which is a ceramic coating applied as a thermal barrier on nickel-based superalloy turbine blades. No yttrium means no jets… These minor metals have major consequences when they are no longer available. giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic…

Chinese export controls now extend beyond refined critical metals to specialized industrial equipment, including tunnel boring machines (TBMs). TBMs are the most common way of building underground road and rail infrastructure... and they are also increasingly used in mining. TBMs have been used in underground mine development at several copper, coal and platinum-group-metal operations in the US, Australia, and South America. Over the past 20 years, Chinese-produced TBMs have grown from ZERO to 60-70% of the global market share, producing approximately 250-300 TBMs per year... approximately half of which are exported. So, we suspect that this news will cause a PANIC in the global TBM market. We plan to use a TBM at our Santa Cruz copper project in Arizona to develop mine access from the surface. Fortunately for us, the US has its own TBM manufacturer, @Robbins_Co, and earlier this year we purchased a 9.3-metre diameter Robbins TBM for Santa Cruz. So this news won't disrupt our development plans at @ivanhoeelectric... others may not be as fortunate. reuters.com/world/asia-pacif…

I really enjoyed sitting down with Daniel Thomas earlier today at the @FT Metals and Mining Summit in London… 20 minutes went by in seconds. With critical minerals so fundamental to national security and defence, maybe next year the organisers will rename it to the FT Metals & Defence Summit 😉 @ftlive @DanielThomasLDN

We need to mine as much copper in the next 18 years as we have mined in the past 10,000 years, which is 700-800 million tonnes... and that's without the AI demand. Including AI demand, @BMO estimates we need ~35,000 tonnes of copper per gigawatt of installed data centre capacity... And according to S&P, by 2030, installed data centre capacity in the US is expected to reach 152 GW (~62 GW today).

Spot ZINC treatment changes (TCs) continue to fall further into negative territory.  Since the end of last week's Golden Week holiday, TCs have edged down again to NEGATIVE $150 - $160 per tonne... or $235 – $245 per tonne BELOW the 2026 benchmark of $85 per tonne of zinc concentrate.   While zinc concentrate spot TCs have traded in and out of negative territory over the past ~2 years (see chart 👇), this week's spot prices (-$150 to -$160) are an all-time low.   As mentioned before with copper, given the wide gap between spot and benchmark TCs, there is a real chance, once negotiations start next week, that we won't reach a benchmark settlement for 2027.... for the first time ever. This would mean industry-wide copper concentrate offtake agreements shift to rolling spot-market index pricing…. A SIGNIFICANT industry shift.   Unlike copper, while tight zinc concentrate supply has also driven a wide gap between spot and benchmark zinc concentrate TCs, we don't see any risk of this market moving to a rolling spot-market index...   What we do expect is that the miners will continue to have greater negotiating power and so the annual benchmark price will fall further.... PLUS we expect to see the introduction of payables for other metals like germanium... The annual benchmark for zinc TCs typically doesn't get decided until February, so we are still a few months away until we'll find out.

This chart, courtesy of Alex Topouzoglou at @Stifel, shows that drilling activity has noticeably recovered in the past 3 months, which is GOOD... However, over the past two years, the share of drilling dedicated to copper exploration, arguably the most important of the metals listed in the chart, has remained largely unchanged... which is BAD. Despite copper prices having risen >50% since October 2024, the incentive price is clearly not high enough to encourage others... whereas it seems to be high enough for precious metals, which dominate drilling activity. No matter the copper price, our dedicated team of geologists at @IvanhoeMines_ and @ivanhoeelectric continue to drill for the next tier-one copper discovery... and it's only a matter of time before they find one.

This is a good read by @Bloomberg, breaking down all the components that go into building a theoretical 1-gigawatt AI data centre. We’ve all seen the headline numbers before, but the required gigadollars are still hard to digest. $30 BILLION is equivalent to X2 new USS John F. Kennedy Aircraft carriers... for just one gigawatt of data centre capacity. ....and the US is expected to add more than 60 gigawatts of data center capacity over the next four years. In copper terms alone, that's >2 million tonnes of copper (at 35,000 tonnes of copper per gigawatt; source: @BMO). So this AI boom is just a metals boom in disguise. Capital expenditure by @Meta, @Alphabet, @Amazon and @Microsoft this year alone is expected to total $0.75 TRILLION.... increasing by+2.3 times to $1.75 TRILLION in 2027. These estimates are based on already-outdated metal prices. The bill will keep inflating, as the cost of finding and mining the required copper, nickel, palladium, silver, scandium, gallium, germanium, niobium, and grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES), to name a few, keeps rising. Supply of these metals is ALREADY in deficit, and their supply chains are increasingly balkanizing. So, Bloomberg's numbers are likely to be closer to the floor than the ceiling. @ivanhoeelectric @IvanhoeMines_ @IvanhoeAtlantic bloomberg.com/features/2026-…