This page houses some of my writings and thoughts on critical minerals development as well as the capstone projects that Munk School (University of Toronto) students have done for Ziemba Insights for the last few years. Critical minerals development in Canada and around the world is of increasing importance as our consumption patterns shift, and many governments try to reduce their reliance on Chinese supply chains. This year’s project focuses in on financialization of critical minerals and whether developing markets could bridge the temporal fundamental gaps in the market for some minerals. The supply demand gap, Chinese processing dominance and demand uncertainty has led to significant price drops for metals like Lithium. Market measures or an implicit strategic reserve wouldn’t solve all problems, but could be part of better managing the swings. Watch this space.
Writings on Critical minerals:
Good News Bad News for Critical Minerals The summary of a presentation I made at the Hudson Institute/MacDonald Laurier Institute Event November 7 2024
Some thoughts on Critical Minerals: Cautious Optimism, Worries about Chinese overcapacity (March 2024)
Volkswagen, then Stellantis: Billions for battery plants, but little on mines for raw material Globe and Mail (May 2023)
Summary of Canada’s critical mineral outlook (2023)
Reports from Munk School
2025 Report on Developing Financial Markets for Critical Minerals. Project team of Eunice Chong, Dylan Gudofsky, Sannan Saheeb and Simranjeet Singh looked at the importance of financialization of critical minerals including which minerals could be ripe for more market development. Despite their strategic importance, markets for many critical minerals remain illiquid, opaque, and highly volatile, limiting the ability of producers and consumers to hedge risks and accurately price these resources. Financializing markets would not solve supply issues on their own, but they could be a part of government efforts to develop stockpiles, incentivize production and perhaps to put a floor under prices to make banks more interested in funding and buyers to agree to off take agreements.
Critical minerals suffer from a dominance in processing in China, but recent low prices for many metals and a temporal gap in supply/demand fundamentals has impaired new production in developed economies. The group looked at the past development of financial markets, including recent financialization of Lithium and past work on other base metals to look at the path to market for other minerals. They find the greatest potential for graphite and Vanadium, but also find some potential for Gallium, Germanium, Antimony, Beryllium and Zirconium, many of which are currently subject to Chinese export licensing restrictions which have significantly reduced the availability of supplies. Read the report or take a look at the data for more.
2024 report by Kate Costaris, Nina Logvin, Alice Lussato, Felicia Jingyao Qin and Peter Bingxuan Wang focused on the province by province development of critical minerals in Canada, the state of play across Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Copper and Nickel. It built on the work in 2023 to look at what projects were really being done and whether supply chains were really benefiting from the new Federal, provincial and international incentives. The answer of course, was partly tho many logistical, permitting and price issues remain.
2023 report by Giancarlo Da-Re, Ryan Fung, Matthew Funk, Elizabeth Gallagher and Hunter Shields. This mapped the global developments in Lithium, Cobalt, Graphite, Copper and Nickel markets to look at where Canada was positioned and where projects could develop. The research suggests that the largest opportunity in Canada resides in nickel including potential Class 1, high-ESG operations on the West Coast. As with fossil fuel energy projects, Canada does have an opportunity to demand higher environmental and labor standards than some emerging economy peers, but there continue to be some questions about the cost of these projects, which should be reviewed.
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