NeutralCuCOPPER
URNMSprott Uranium Miners ETFSprott Uranium Miners ETF Brazil produces 93% of the world's niobium, and its new critical minerals list just put niobium in its lowest tier.
That ranking is the most useful part of this announcement.
On November 5th, Brazil's new critical minerals council approved its first official list of 27 minerals, sorted into three priority tiers.
Rare earths, graphite, lithium, copper and uranium sit in the top tier, potassium and phosphate in the middle, and niobium, iron and gold at the bottom.
The council scored each mineral on how much Brazil depends on other countries for it and how far Brazil is from turning it into finished products.
On those tests niobium scores low, since Brazil already supplies most of the planet.
Rare earths land at the other end: Brazil holds the second-largest reserves on Earth and produces less than 1% of world supply.
Potassium earns its place on dependence alone, with about 95% of the potash used on Brazilian farms arriving by ship.
The ranking decides who gets help first.
Only projects on listed minerals can apply for a guarantee fund backed by up to R$2 billion in federal money, plus up to R$1 billion a year in tax credits from 2030 to 2034.
Those credits pay for processing done inside Brazil.
The same law lets the council approve or block any change in who controls a company holding rights to these minerals, whether the buyer is Brazilian or foreign.
For global capital, this list is a map of the plants Brazil wants built at home and is ready to help finance.
View original →NeutralCuCOPPER
VALEAgXAGSilverSilver The same tonne of copper pays a Brazilian mine and puts a Brazilian smelter in the red.
Each one keeps a different ledger.
A copper mine sells at the London price, in dollars.
Copper hit a record $14,875 a tonne in London on September 10th.
A Brazilian mine pays much of its bills in reais.
In 2025, 47.6% of $VALE's costs were in reais.
When the real gets stronger, those bills cost more in dollars.
Between July and September, a stronger real than a year before added $258 to the cost of each tonne of Vale's copper.
When the real gets weaker, the same bills shrink.
In the week after Brazil's October 25th runoff, the dollar jumped about 9% against the real and closed at R$5.446.
Vale's copper also comes out of the ground with gold and silver.
Over those same three months, Vale spent $6,721 to produce each tonne of copper, and the gold and silver from the same rock brought in $6,771.
After every cost it counts, Vale's all-in cost came to minus $175 a tonne.
The smelter keeps the other ledger.
Brazil's smelter in Bahia has described its ore as about 28% copper.
In mid-October, the spot fee for processing copper ore in China sat near minus $240 a tonne.
A minus fee means the smelter pays the seller for the right to process it.
At 28% copper, that works out to about $857 paid out for every tonne of copper inside, before the smelter earns anything.
It still earns from the extra copper it recovers, sulfuric acid, gold and silver.
Brazil's only copper smelter has been in hibernation since 2025.
The full breakdown of both ledgers, and the two ways capital reaches Brazilian copper, is in the article below.
View original →Two kinds of copper smelter face the same collapse in fees this year.
One kind still collects record prices on what it sells.
The other kind keeps almost nothing.
A smelter can earn money in two places.
It charges miners a fee to melt their ore into copper.
It can also charge buyers a premium for the finished metal.
The first source of money is gone.
In 2025, the yearly fee was $21.25 a tonne.
In 2026, it fell to zero.
By mid-October, on China's spot market, it sat near minus $240, so the smelter paid the miner.
Ore already sold for 2027 cleared in the minus $330's to minus $360's.
The second source of money keeps rising.
Aurubis, Europe's biggest copper smelter, raised its premium from $315 to $347 a tonne for 2027, according to market sources.
Codelco, Chile's state copper company, raised its premium from $325 to $350.
Aurubis buys most of its ore on long-term contracts and sells its own metal to its own customers.
It earns less for melting and still collects the premium.
A smelter that buys ore on the spot market and lives on the melting fee sits in the middle with nothing.
Brazil learned this the hard way.
Its only copper smelter, in Bahia, bought most of its ore abroad, lived on the fee and has been in hibernation since 2025.
The full breakdown of Brazil's copper chain and the two ways capital gets in, is in the article below.
View original →Copper smelters now pay mines for the right to melt their ore.
For decades, the mine paid the smelter.
That flip shows one of the oldest rules in business.
Money flows to whoever owns the scarce part.
A copper mine digs up rock and grinds it into a powder called concentrate.
That powder is between one-quarter and one-third copper.
A smelter melts it down into pure copper that factories buy.
The mine used to pay the smelter a fee for the melting.
In 2025, that fee was $21.25 a tonne.
In 2026, it fell to zero, the lowest ever agreed.
By October, on the China spot market, it hit about minus $240.
Minus means the smelter pays the mine.
The world built furnaces faster than it built mines.
Too many furnaces chase too little ore, so every shipment turns into a bidding war.
At the other end, buyers of finished copper are paying more than ever.
In Europe, the top sellers of finished copper set record premiums for 2027, reported at $347 and $350 a tonne on top of the London price.
Data centers, power lines and weapons all want copper at the same time.
So the money lands at the two ends.
The mine owns the ore.
The seller owns the customer.
The furnace in the middle owns neither, so it gets squeezed.
Brazil shows both sides in one country.
In the third quarter of 2026, Vale's copper mines in Pará had an all-in cost of minus $175 a tonne, because the gold and silver in the same rock paid for the copper.
Brazil's only copper smelter, in Bahia, has sat idle since 2025.
Same metal, same country, opposite results.
The rule works far beyond copper.
The real question about any business is simple.
Does it own the scarce part, or does it pay someone who does?
The full breakdown of Brazil's copper chain, the dollar math and the two doors for capital:
View original →CuCOPPERBullish
CRMSalesforceNeutralSalesforce Brazil sits on about 79 million tonnes of copper, and the world is about to run short of it.
BloombergNEF's new outlook, released today, says the shortage starts in 2028.
By 2050 the gap grows to 20 million tonnes, about 44% of all the copper the world will need that year.
Closing it takes $332 billion of new mines, and a new mine takes about 17 years to open.
AI adds to the squeeze, because data centers need power, and power companies are spending record sums on the transformers and cable that carry it.
New code can be copied overnight for almost nothing, while new copper takes almost two decades to dig up.
When something takes that long to make, whoever already owns it gets paid first.
Ero Copper, which runs mines in Bahia and Pará, kept about 34 cents of every sales dollar as operating profit in 2025, while Salesforce kept about 20.
Brazil's mining agency counts those 79 million tonnes, and about 95% of them sit in Pará.
Most of that copper needs dollar capital to come out of the ground, because a mine here sells in dollars while a mid-sized company borrowing in reais paid about 23% to 25% a year through 2026.
I broke down who gets paid in the AI boom, and where Brazil fits, in the article below.
https://t.co/CXVIDWnOPX
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