INTERVIEW: West urgently needs to redress critical minerals balance: TechMet CEO

Further steps to redress the balance of supplies in critical minerals are urgently needed but displacing China's overwhelming dominance in the sector will be a long and difficult exercise, with Western countries likely to be reliant on the Asian giant’s supply chains for at least the next decade, TechMet CEO Brian Menell told Platts in an interview.

“Chinese supplies are not going to go away, we’ll eventually just be less dependent on them. They’re not going to stop being the biggest players in our game for 10-15 years,” Menell said.

Higher tariffs, such as those imposed on mineral imports into the US “will help level the playing field in the short-term until local concerns build scale,” he said. “This will help friends, competitors etc build capacity with some degree of price protection.”

TechMet is part-owned by the US government's International Development Finance Corporation, and also counts the Qatar Investment Authority as a shareholder.

One of TechMet’s main aims is to promote the emergence of China-free minerals supply chains, highlighted as a priority in the US, with support for such programs offered by the US's Eximbank and energy and defense departments.

The Western world is still more than 70% dependent on supplies of processed lithium from China, which also dominates the graphite, rare earths and manganese segments.

Chinese producers over the last 15 years have built "total dominance" of hardrock lithium minerals processing for high-purity production for batteries, also developing direct lithium extraction technology for production from brine, Menell noted.

China has created a mechanism to restrict international access to these technologies where necessary, he said, although DLE technologies are being developed elsewhere, so this is not an insurmountable problem for industry development.

“The new US administration is very aggressively not subject to precedent or bureaucracy and we think its prioritizing of critical minerals will be a prominent part of accelerating progress for a China-free industry,” said Menell. “We will do bigger deals quicker and the ability to execute and engage will grow, particularly in the national security space.”

Some producers have expressed optimism the administration change could help speed up new mine permitting.

Ukraine lithium project

TechMet is part of a consortium interested in developing the potentially large-scale lithium hardrock Dobra project in Ukraine, which will likely form part of the upcoming US-Ukraine government natural resources agreement, and for which Ukraine’s government has yet to open a tender process.

However, the project is still at the exploration stage, with capacity not yet determined and production still several years off, Menell said.

He was not concerned about a potential slowdown in EV uptake or the US's recent removal of EVs sales subsidies.

“The Trump administration is anti-EV subsidies but not anti-EVs,” Menell said. “We don’t think the EV industry in the US will contract -- there’s a clear and unstoppable move to EVs. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the EVs manufacturing ecosystem in the US.”

EVs are a primary growth area for critical mineral usage, but far from the sole or even most dominant area, with growth also strong from renewable energy, AI and defense technologies. These need to be supplied independently from Chinese control as a priority, Menell said.

Deficits are looming for all critical minerals “with no shadow of a doubt”, but the timeframe to move from short-term oversupply to medium-term structural shortage would vary, he said.

“Lithium may go into short supply within two years, nickel in three-four years’ time, and cobalt in five-six years,” he said.