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bne March 2025 Cover story I 31
Lithium and graphite are the potential big money markers, but their low valuations call into question the
“trillions of dollars” valuation being pushed by US Senator Graham or the Nato Energy Security Centre of Excellence in Lithuania.
Titanium: Ukraine is among the top global producers of titanium-bearing minerals like ilmenite and rutile, which are used in producing titanium metal for aerospace, military and medical applications. Despite its production capacity, the country lacks facilities
to produce titanium sponge, the form required for advanced industries.
Ukrainian reserves of titanium account for approximately 7% of the world's total, or around 52mn tonnes, making it the largest reserve holder in Europe, but almost all of it remains in the ground and much of it in territory controlled by Russia. In theory if the entire reserves
which is dominated by Russia. Exports of uranium ore, without first refining it into yellow cake NPP fuel enriched ore, are low.
As part of the global shift towards clean energy, Ukraine’s exports of uranium ore spiked in 2023 by 250% y/y, but those exports were still only worth $29mn in total.
Cobalt and nickel: These metals
are crucial for battery production
and various industrial applications. Ukraine's deposits of cobalt (8.800 tonnes, 0.5% of the world’s reserves) and nickel (215,00 tonnes, 0.4% of the world’s deposits) are collectively worth $3.6bn at current prices.
Copper: Essential for electrical wiring and electronics, copper deposits in Ukraine add to the country's portfolio of critical minerals, but currently Ukraine does not produce any copper at all.
extract and refine economically due to their geological dispersion.
Here is another problem: although China is bereft of significant mineral deposits of any kind, except REMs, it has built up a massive processing and refining capacity for REMs by investing in mines all over the world, and currently dominates global supplies, accounting for 80% of global production.
China is home to 44mn tonnes of REMs, just under half of the world’s total of proven deposits, with Vietnam (22mn tonnes), Brazil (21mn tonnes) and Russia (10mn tonnes) holding most of the rest, reports Bloomberg. Three of the top four deposits of REMs are in BRICS countries and Vietnam is not exactly the US’ best buddy.
Russia has played a similar game with uranium. Russia is not alone in having large deposits of uranium ore, but it has also built up a dominant position in the global supply of the extremely costly refining of uranium into the so-called yellow cake enriched variety that is used as fuel by nuclear power plants (NPPs).
The fear is that both China and Russia will use their stranglehold over the supply of these minerals and metals as
a weapon in the geopolitical war currently raging between East and West.
China imposed export restrictions on gallium and germanium in August 2023, citing national security concerns. That was clearly a warning shot, following the CHIPS act restricting technology imports to the US, of what it could do if a full-blown trade war broke out between the two. These two elements are crucial for semiconductor manufacturing, military applications and telecommunications.
The US also banned the import of Russian uranium, on which it remains highly dependent to fuel its fleet of NPPs. Except it didn’t, as it doesn’t produce more than a fraction of what the US NPPs need, and in parallel introduced a system of waivers that allow US NPPs to import as much Russian yellow cake as they need until 2028.
“Ukrainian reserves of titanium account for approximately 7% of the world's total, or around 52mn tonnes, making it the largest reserve holder in Europe, but almost all of it remains in the ground and much of it in territory controlled by Russia.”
were exploited they would be worth $421bn but in 2024 Ukraine’s titanium concentrate exports were down by more than a third (37%) year on year and worth a mere $11.6mn, and the country will never capitalise on the full value of its titanium exports, unless it invests in the capability to make titanium sponge – something that Russia did long ago and which will remain Kyiv’s main rival in this business.
Uranium: The nation holds significant uranium reserves of 107,200 tonnes, accounting for about 2% of the world's total identified resources. However, like almost all countries that have uranium ore reserves, it has no refining capacity,
Ukraine is believed to possess the fourth largest reserves of copper in Europe, or less than the leader, Poland, with 36mn tonnes of copper. These reserves are primarily located in the Rivne, Zhytomyr and Volyn regions, with approximately 150 known copper occurrences identified,
Precise figures for Ukraine’s copper reserves are unavailable, but Poland’s reserves are worth $340bn, and Ukraine’s reserves are some fraction of that.
Strategic, not rare, minerals
Despite their name, most rare earth metals are not actually rare in the Earth's crust. But they are difficult to
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