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Not quiet in Longonjo SP - busy, busy busy:
https://www.miningweekly.com/article/angolan-rare-earth-project-construction-progressing-2023-11-24
Busy doing nothing - apparently not....
Simply Wall st have started to take an interest in PRE as the share price slowly recovers. Fair comment re: institutional investors confidence (and power), warning signs are nothing new, but they got the message that PA's recent buys signals positive move:
https://simplywall.st/stocks/gb/materials/lse-pre/pensana-shares/news/pensana-plc-lonpre-institutional-owners-may-be-pleased-with-1
Munbles - thanks for your two updates - appreciate your efforts.
More positive straws in the wind:
https://oilprice.com/Metals/Commodities/Rare-Earth-Prices-Skyrocket-Following-Burmese-Mining-Suspension.html
Burma temporary embargo on RE China exports is forcing world stockpiling and a turn round on RE prices - up more than 6% in a month.
I'll be watching the SP a bit closer from now on....
DS22 - I took the figure of £158K as half the £316K you mentioned, since this 'pocket money' award is to be shared between Pensana and Polestar (at least it was according to the Pensana newsletter I received yesterday). Actually it's being shared with 3 others so, if we're going to be pedantic, the amount Pensana gets is a princely £79K.
HMG praising with faint damns indeed - it's nothing short of derisory.
Ladies, ladies calm down.
Coming pack to the point - this award is yet another can kicked down the road - just like Rolls Royce being awarded the chance to compete for building UK modular reactors when it's the only viable UK supplier.
It's just jobs for the boys back at Innovate HQ - a game of pass the parcel where the music never stops.
16 "winners" (of what?) get a share of £6.5m to compete for a handout from a £15m pot of gold. Are they having a laugh or what? That's as much use as an accordion at a boar hunt.
More make work from a government department with no intention or capability to do anything useful.
See here:
https://arynews.tv/chinese-rare-earth-prices-hit-20-month-high/
Myanmar supplied 38% of China's RE ore imports in 6 months to date, and the mines have been shut down for inspection testing. But China is worried that it's Mayanmar suppliers are expecting higher RE prices and may hold back stock/supplies by extending the closures and disrupting China's southern refineries.
Every cloud....
For the chartists here - 20-day MA overtook the 50-day MA on 7 Sep, and went through the 100 day MA yesterday. Assuming SP stays positive, we should see the 50-day MA overtake the 100-day next week. Almost looks like a trend....
However, a quick look at today's trades shows PRE is still a favoured bot play. Sustained AT buys from the open to drive the price up to target (38p?), now seeing sustained AT selling.
Wonder how much longer the MMs will play along with these day trader pin money bets through "fake" volatility?
We all know that daily volumes continue to be a tiny percentage of a otherwise solid register and the silent majority are simply waiting for the shift which is coming.
EU and US have started to tighten the screws so that domestic industries, who are bearing the costs of emissions reduction cannot be undercut by more-polluting/subsidised foreign competitors.
Significant developments in the last few days that the the EU and US will shortly (Oct 23) begin the first phase of the Carbon Border adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), implementing 25 to 40% tariffs on 6 initial import sectors, so that the exporters effectively pay the same rate of carbon taxes on their output as do EU and US compliant domestic suppliers. This first step requires the external suppliers to declare what amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) is embedded per unit of imported goods.
Initially this will cover 6 carbon intensive industries - cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen.
By 2026 the tariffs will become operational and cover all carbon-intensive imports.
Rare earths are very significant GHG sources in transport, refining, metal extraction and magnet making - involving calcination, acid-roasting and electrolytic/thermal reduction. China is far and away the largest extractor/refiner/producer and its energy is predominantly coal-fired and this will increase until peak-CO2 in 2030, according to China itself. One study states that between 2010 and 2020, the use of permanent magnets has resulted cumulatively in 32 billion tonnes CO2-equivalent of GHG emissions globally.
Therefor RE metals/ores/magnets/EV and wind turbine products will certainly be included in the carbon border taxes/tariffs in the future.
China has immediately gone on the offensive against this threat to its market domination, and Beijing has threatened to make WTO appeals/rulings.
Additionally, the EU this week launched an anti-subsidy probe into China’s electric car industry in an attempt to shield European manufacturers before they are priced out by Chinese rivals. If the commission finds that domestic EV production will be harmed by EV subsidies in China, it may levy tariffs on Chinese EV imports of up to 10 to 15%. Any non-EU EV production is also liable, such as TESLA vehicles manufactured in China and imported to the EU.
China's response will probably be along the lines of its EV battery strategy - to secure as much non-China mineral sources worldwide as it can, build Chinese-owned/financed factories/refineries within the US and EU, and offset the loss of export markets by saturating its domestic EV and wind turbine programme based on the marginal costs of its existing internal rare earths industry.
The emphasis will be on low-emissions RE/EV/wind power supply chains, and for once China will be on the starting block along with competing nations in the race. Pensana has about a 4-year lead in its efforts to establish an ESG compliant and vertically integrated rare earths industry so must be very well-placed to attract investment right now. All IMHO and you should DYOR, this is not investment advice just opinion.
Could be China is about to introduce RE magnet/metals export restrictions following latest unproductive US trade talks, which will reverse the massive RE ores/metals market prices dive this year so far.
Could be just another pump and dump bot-fest - yesterday's trading was transparently AT/bot buys driven - same earlier today - SP peaked at 28.9p at noon - and then the selling started.....
More likely it's just a bit of knock-on from irrational exuberance in worldwide makets because we're not all dead yet.
Tony - here's the detail: https://pensana.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Coola-Update-LSE-August-2023-F.pdf
Tony - re: sample depths - this from Pensana announcement:
Page 2
Sulima West Soil Sampling
Two hundred and thirty-eight soil samples were collected on a 50 m x 50 m sample spacing over an area of 650
m x 800 m covering the area of identified historic trenches and surroundings at the Sulima West target. Individual
soil samples are from 10-20 cm below surface, were sieved to 2% TREO in
soils within which a zone with >3% TREO is delineated
China - thanks for an interesting link.
Looking again at the Pensana Aug 21 2023 'Longonjo Operations Update' - the only mention of continuing Wood Group involvement is one reference to the previously completed Wood FEED. No sign that Wood UK are now involved at all, with ADP and Lycopodium Group coming on board and driving the re-design & build. ADP is the SA subsidiary of Lycopodium (HQ Perth Aus). It claims to have 20 years+ mining project exposure in Angola, but looking further into this, it seems only in gold and diamond mining.
I think this is a significant re-orientation of what was a joint UK/ASWF-driven and resourced mine to a predominantly African/Australian project - which I guess might be traceable to new conditions and requirements regarding how funding capital is sourced and how it is spent, imposed by ABSA Bank as a pre-condition for the provision of loan finance.
Not a whisper on the impact of the re-engineering on the Saltend FEED/design/cost/schedule too.
All in all, looks like quite a shift of control and somewhat discouraging for us LT holders?
the tata/jaguar somerset gigafactory news (yet to be confirmed by hmg) looks like pretty good news for uk battery and critical minerals supply chains. dig deeper and you find:
- uk taxpayers will be on the hook to the tata jv for £500million in direct subsidies and the factory will be built and owned by tata's partner envision (same china company who are also building the uk's only other battery gigafactory - for nissan at sunderland).
- uk taxpayers are already on the hook for a £100miliion subsidy/grant behind the sunderland deal, the government is alleged to be contributing £100 million to the mix, with £423 million from nissan and £450 million from envision.
- tata has previous form with its port talbot steel works, where the financial times reported in july 2022 that the indian-owned group was then seeking £1.5bn of taxpayer funding to help it decarbonise its operations there and keep the steelworks operating.
- british (haha) steel in s****horpe is now owned by jingye group (china) who bought it in march 2020 and subsequently rolled hmg over, demanding a taxpayer bailout amounting to £300million in 2022 just to keep it open.
chinese battery companies (catl, envision, guoxuan etc) are critical players in a large number of gigafactory jv builds across europe and the us for major ev manufacturers like mercedes-benz, vokswagen, tesla, and now jaguar.
in the uk it looks like the taxpayer could soon be on the hook for upwards of £2billion in direct subsidies, a large portion of which is going to end up in the coffers of chinese and also korean companies. envision has also announced it will soon be investing in lithium supplies to feed its battery ventures, and is already a major player in wind turbine production.
and the point of all this? can we really claim to be spending taxpayers' money setting up independent and secure china-free supply chains by putting the uk eveer-more in hock to chinese manufacturers?
more importantly, within the uk's current fiscal constraints, just how much more can hmg afford to hand out by way of ev/net zero investment subsidies? what's left in the kitty before the election in 2024, to deal with the other elephant in the room ie: - if not from china, where does hmg plan to source the rare earth magnets for all these ev's and wind turbines the uk is going to make? does it have a plan at all?
MajorOak - thanks for the thumbs up - sometimes I've wondered why I bothered posting on this board recently. 100% agree about the recent takedown of the board by the more rabid elements here.
But who'd have thought a return to a losuy 25p would signal joy all round eh?
What will it take for UK to turn it's current disarray round? - a good kicking I fear....
I'm not an Alkemy holder, but I have followed with interest PA's second runner - and it seems to me that PRE and Tees Lithium are fundamentally based on the same sound logic - securing supply chains, world shortages of both minerals looming inevitably and a well-thought out ESG and environmental approach to filling the gap between mining/extraction and end-use products (magnets, batteries, etc).
You can argue about CAPEX for both projects till the cows come home, but one fact is startlingly obvious - the UK is squandering capital on idiotic vanity projects like HS2 which could fund dozens of Pensanas/Tees Lithium operations, not to mention 3 or 4 battery gigafactories. Yet it cannot rustle up the investment funds for projects essential to the country's economic survival and security in the short-term future?
Is it just that we've had a Tory goverment for too long and now have the wrong people have percolated to the top, who have just lost the plot? Whatever happened to small government, minimal interference in business, bonfire of the quangos, 2 regulations out for every 1 in, low taxes, Brexit payoff and positively promoting business investment? Instead we've got a Blue Blairite government on a limited life-span....
Anybody's guess how this is all going to pan out - but I do see the risk that mining majors in the US/Australia and maybe even China will judge that buying up the minerals at source is never a bad idea and Pensana chooses to take the money for Longonjo and bow out.
A more probable risk is that China decides to give the West a kick in the pants, and slaps embargoes on magnets, rare earths and battery exports, to get its way on superchips/fabrication tech export controls in US. As I've said before China can go for years, self-consuming its entire production of these based on massive expansion of its internal wind-power and EV market. It's probably the only event that's likely to register with HMG in UK and shake it out of its assumption that the UK can always import what it needs relying on the 'kindness of strangers'.
Good luck with Alkemy!
DP/SP - warning - this message contains the word NOMINEES - yes we all do know what it means - please contain yourself.
AS1971 - warning - this message contains hard information and could be lethally boring to you - please don't read it.
Just had a sniff around the latest PRE Shares Register on the Pensana website.
As you'd expect ASF YOVA and Sate Stree Nominees holdings are up by 15m from the placing in June, but look who's here - a new entrant at number 4 - our favourite bete noir - BANK OF NEW YORK (BNY) (NOMINEES) LTD - straight into the top 4 with 24.1m shares in tow.
Top faller is JIM Nominees with now only 1.1m holding, down from their previous 27m holding, falling from number 3 to number 19 in the Top20.
So what are the tie-ups here?
We know Selection Capital holds Paul Atherley's wedge, and State Street holds M&G's, but I wonder what happened to this lot (from the Jun 2020 Pensana Rare Earths Register)?
JP MORGAN NOMINEES AUSTRALIA PTY LIMITED
CITICORP NOMINEES PTY LIMITED
JENFRE NOMINEES PTY LTD
VYNBEN PTY LIMITED
MR RICHARD ARTHUR LOCKWOOD
STARFIN PTY LTD
MR NEIL THACKER MACLACHLAN
MR DAVID PETER HAMMOND
INVIA CUSTODIAN PTY LIMITED
MS PHILIPPA CAMERON CUMMINS
TASMAN FUND TRUSTEE LIMITED
MR LECKIE GERAI
PINELEAF PTY LIMITED
NATIONAL NOMINEES LIMITED
- joint holding a whacking 44m shares, and each above 1.4m shares minimum which would put them in the current TOP20 register?
China - does all this back up your contention that the USA is building a PRE holding to hijack Longonjo maybe?
Certainly is seems to show that PA's disdain for smaller/private investors and his wish for only large holders to own PRE is coming true (yes, yes I know - nominees again...)
Sane comments welcome.