Suits and Boots | The Sustainable Business Podcast

Driving the Transition: The Critical Minerals Set to Shape the Next Decade

• Season 1 • Episode 24

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This episode explores how critical minerals are reshaping global supply chains. The discussion unpacks copper’s “critical” status, midstream bottlenecks, and the push for cleaner, more resilient production. 

From AI-driven exploration to circularity limits and permitting challenges, the speakers examine what it will take to secure responsible, transparent supply for the energy transition—and why collaboration across value chains will define the decade ahead.

Speakers include:

  • Assheton Stewart Carter | Executive Chair & Founder, TDi Sustainability
  • Juan Igancio Diaz | President and CEO | International Copper Association (ICA)
  • Erez Ichilov | Founder and Manager | Cedrus Arbor LLC
  • Richard Taylor  |  CEO | Battery Britain

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced in advance of the 2025 Resourcing Tomorrow event that will take place in London between 2-4 December. Find out more about the event>

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Hello and welcome to this special edition of Suits and Boots, the TDI Sustainability podcast series in conjunction with Resourcing Tomorrow. In this series, speakers at this year's Resourcing Tomorrow's event discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the conference. I'm Ashton Stewart Carter, Executive Chair at TDI Sustainability, and your host for today. Critical minerals are not only important, as their name suggests, but increasingly strategic. This episode maps the key drivers of this interest in mineral criticality, Copper's elevation to critical, shifting geopolitics, and at the midstream bottleneck in refining and processing. We unpack practical incentives for lower impact supply, from smarter recovery and co-product strategies to renewable power integration and trusted standards that strengthen market confidence. Our expert panel examines the reality of circularity, useful but no substitute for new supply, and how AI and remote sensing are reshaping both exploration and efficiency. We also discuss permitting pressures, the sheer scale of new projects required to meet future demand, and why international alliances will be essential in achieving these goals. One key takeaway: build clean, transparent, and circular midstream industries to succeed in the critical decade ahead. I'm delighted to be joined today for this discussion by Juan Ignacio Diaz, Eres Ichilov, and Richard Taylor. Juan Ignacio Diaz has been the president and CEO of the International Copper Association since 2024, with more than 18 years of experience in leading complex businesses with major corporations. His director is sustainable technology implementation across the energy, mining, and transportation sectors. Throughout his career, Juan Ignacio has held positions where he was able to develop the strategy for the institutions he worked for and to drive innovation. A theme that can be detected is one of continual change and improvement. My observation that his leadership role at the ICA follows this theme and applies this to advance the collective voice of the association's members and COP's role in a global economy that is in transition to become more sustainable. I'm joined too by Richard Taylor, who is the founder of Battery Britain and a co-founder of Green Lithium, where he has championed the development of the UK's first commercial lithium refinery. Richard also chairs the Institute of Directors Natural Resource Group, which focuses on topics surrounding the protection of the environment and sustainable development. He has spent more than a decade in the energy and natural resource sector with roles in Petrofac, Mersk Oil, and Deloitte. I know Richard is a hardworking industry diplomat for clean energy production. And finally, I am joined today by Erez Ichilov, who is a critical minerals expert based in New York City. He's a seasoned mining, metals, and physical commodities executive, director, advisor, and investor with a legal and financial background. He served as managing director of TRAXIS Projects, the investment arm of the Traxis Group for 11 years. Erez founded Cedras Arbor LLC in 2024 to focus on responsible mining of battery materials and other critical minerals and on developing sustainable processing technologies to support the energy transition. Welcome, Erez, Richard, and Juan Ignacio. Thank you. Thank you to be here. Great to have you all on this podcast. So I thought we'd start by setting the scene, setting the scene around the energy transition. And, you know, we've been told for a while now that we're entering into an era of price suppression as production globally meets demand, at least in the short and medium term. But then at the same time, access to those minerals due to restrictions triggered by policies that are geopolitical nature, what was once abundant seems now less certain to be. In short, the critical minerals market seems to be evolving pretty fast. So what I want to ask each of you, um, just like a kind of a quick fire round to get us started, is what do you see are the current key market trends overall and which commodities do you think have the greatest potential, uh, which the ones to watch in terms of their um sustained demand and and and why? A big question I know, but um I we have a very experienced panel here today. Um perhaps I'll start with um Erez.

Erez Ichilov:

Yes, well, first of all, I want to uh congratulate uh Juan Ignacio that uh copper was added to the uh critical minerals list by the USGS just uh a few weeks ago. So everyone knew that copper is front and center of electrification and energy transition and uh anything associated with that, but now it's also defined as uh as critical, which I think is very much important. But what we've really seen, and I think was a narrative in in recent months that just kept uh kept humming and buzzing and eventually became really uh again front and center of all discussions, is uh the uh the understanding that uh mineral security is basically national security. And we've seen almost like an OPEC moment with uh with rare earth elements uh that are necessary uh, you know, there for uh for permanent magnets, and that's uh that's become uh that's become something very, very important. And we just saw a couple of days ago the American-Australian agreement in that context. And other uh things that we're seeing is that under the probably the same uh the same uh for the same reasons, dual-use materials such as antimony and tungsten are becoming very important. And um antimony is, you know, is fire retardant, but it's also armor-piercing uh material. And uh also um the minor tech metals such as germanium and gallium, which are critical for everything that has to do with communications, IT, etc., are also are also there. So I think um we sort of had a bit of an opic moment. Uh the 1970s are back, but it's not oil this time. It's all these materials, the processing technologies and the and the equipment um that uh that became the uh the focal point point of discussion and where the markets are moving. And we saw we saw that also uh in the stock markets when prices of some of the stocks that were uh you know associated with these materials went up 5x within days.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great. Um so Richard, turning turning to you, you heard there that uh from Eres that defense, national security um is driving some of these critical minerals. But from your point of view, um in the battery market, what do you see as are the most hot-to-watch minerals, critical minerals?

Richard Taylor:

Well, first of all, uh you know, I think Eric's exactly right. Um we need to look at this holistically. It comes from lots of different sectors. Defence has taken a real uh front row seat recently in the past weeks, and it's really put the focus on it, but it's put the focus on many different critical metals, um, you know, including the lithiums, the cobalts, and uh anything that is going to help this energy uh transition. So uh without repeating uh what's already been said, you know, it's it's been a great thing, yeah. Uh share prices have gone up, but uh certainly a lot of them have also come down uh in a in a week. Um but you know it's it's the ones that are gonna help us through this energy transition, um, the manganese, the graphites, uh the coppers, um, anything that's gonna help from from the energy side, you know, especially we're looking at AI, looking at all the big data centers, everything that needs to be to build all these things. Uh, and from the battery side, it it's it's you know, we've had a bit of an uptick and focus on lithium, but in my eyes, and as you'll find out through the most of this conversation, um, I think that uh really lithium and and the battery supply chain, it's about the midstream, and it's the midstream that we need to be focusing on, it's the midstream where there's a bottleneck, um, and we're gonna get into that. Um, but yeah, I agree, defense has uh created a big spotlight on everything critical minerals um very recently, which is very exciting.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great, thanks. And um, Juan Ignacio, you you were congratulated earlier that copper has made the critical minerals list, um, which hasn't been bid, I guess, because it's um quite abundant, but copper is very much the mineral and the metal to love. It's the thing which can um be relied on to pass electrons through it, so needed for the electrification of our economy. But different countries um have different lists for critical minerals. Can you reflect a little bit on what are the different approaches from different countries from your point of view and in the copper market? And do these different approaches that countries take or blocks like the EU, does that um hamper or enable planning for copper um and copper production? What are some of the examples that you can take that approaches are taken by countries to identify um the critical lists and what are the merits and dismerits of those?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

I want to agree that the critical mirror space is moving really quickly. And but rather than just looking at the short-term trends, it's very interesting to focus on what is driving this change, where is this change coming from? And it's worth mentioning these mega trends, right? These global forces like electrification, urbanization, and climate change, and of course digitalization that are creating a huge demand, not only for copper, but for lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite. Well, around the world, copper is being recognized as essential for both energy and digital transitions. As uh Eras mentioned, in the United States, copper is now in the list of the USDS for critical mineral. Now, if we go to the producers, like for example, Chile, where I'm from and Peru, copper is not only strategic, is the economic foundation of those countries. So each region has a different approach. The EU is focused on recycling, building resilience and diversifying supply. Uh and the US definitely wants to boost the domestic mining to help local manufacturing and at the same time strengthening the global partnership. Um and in countries like Chile and Peru, they're looking at ways to produce more sustainably, yes. But at the same time, they're looking to add uh local value and increment the quality of life of the community surrounding the mining sites.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great. So there's this surging demand as these minerals and metals, materials get onto the critical uh lists. Uh but at the same time, there's concern by um by communities and governments and regulators about the potential harm or impact that mining can have. And so we see that there's also uh responsible sourcing. While some of that responsible sourcing regulations have been rowed back a little bit, it's still there and it's still quite strong. So, Juan Ignacio, from the point of view of the International Copper Association, what can the International Copper Association do to give confidence to the markets and to the consumers that the growing demand is met with responsible production and the and it contributes to sustainable development locally, just like you have mentioned?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

Sure. Well, at the International Copper Association, we always say, and we claim, that the world doesn't need just more copper, it needs better copper. And uh members of ICA are taking this very seriously. Uh, we have a good example with the CopperMec that has become the main global standard for responsible production around the world. Uh, or the LME, the London Metal Exchange, now is using International Copper Association's own methods to measure the carbon footprint of sustainable copper. So today producers are cutting emissions, they're improving uh energy efficiency and ramping up recycling. Uh, if you see in places like Europe and Japan, about half of the copper demand is already met through the recycled materials. So that is what we call circular economy in action.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Got it, yes. And uh Erez, we've heard there that the certifications, voluntary certifications like the copper mark and where exchanges also have a set of um standards or indicators. You spent a large part of your life as an investor and also a trader, and those um that job can be quite fast moving, and you don't always have time to do in-depth due diligence and dig deep into whether a mine has the Coppermark brand or a similar brand. What are the instruments that investors and traders can use and do use to try and promote responsible um sourcing or responsible trading potentially?

Erez Ichilov:

Well, first of all, there are the um, you know, the certifications and the tracking and the uh and the various efforts, including to record sources uh on the uh you know on the incorruptible uh blockchain ledger to um to provide uh more certainty exactly in these instances that you're talking about where fast-moving uh transactions need to be need to be vetted uh relatively quickly and you don't want to to make mistakes. But from um from the investment side where you're taking a bit of a more long-term approach and many time, um what you want to see really is is first of all their approach, the uh the new approach where they sort of understand that a critical minerals project, or for that matter, any um extractive industry, or um cannot be viewed just as in the an independent node uh within a huge uh universe that ignores everything else. When it comes to mining and mining processes, we don’t want to see cherry picking. We want to see that — whether it’s a polymetallic resource or useful waste — we want to see coproducts, we want to see byproducts, we want to see basically that if an animal is slaughtered, everything is consumed. You don’t leave — like past generations did — huge mountains of tailings. Try to do as much as you can in the first iteration. Just to give you an example of of companies, you know, with the with their heart in the right place, which I think is the is the most important thing, is Nouveau Mont graphite, which as uh as Ballinghurst tracks this, we invested in since 2018, I think the first time, a vertically integrated uh natural graphite project in Quebec that's gonna make uh the uh the spherical um the spherical uh graphite that goes in, goes the natural part of the AAM of the anode active uh active materials and lithium-ion batteries. So their mine is located in an area where there's um there's a lot of outdoor activity. There's biking in the summer and there's uh snowmobiles in the winter, etc. So they designed the um the roads and the slopes and the and the sequence, thinking about the next use of the land as it will be given back to the public, and then as it becomes uh part of the recreation areas uh accessible to the public once again, you won't need to invest too much into retrofitting it because that's already part of the thinking. So I guess that's moving from um a node to a multidimensional, very connected project is something that for us is very important as a selection criteria.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Turning to uh Richard, um, you know, lithium is I think has been this mineral as material, which is it's a very saintly material, I would say, because it's had this halo around it because it is going to be the saviour for the electrification as it plays a big part in batteries. Um, but it's not without impacts either. There is association with um water, um operating water scarcity, reducing the table, uh the water table, the water balance, and how that has knock on offence Indigenous people's rights. But you've been an advocate for lithium and you've been in the industry a long time. What can you tell us about the innovations that have been put in place to ensure that this halo is as bright as it can be as when the lithium first came into the public's um eye? Thank you.

Richard Taylor:

Well, I'll talk about hard rock uh lithium. Um, so just to sort of slightly dodge the water table um question a bit, um, but it it goes really um to what was just said. It's uh Eres is spot on, it's the summer of the parts. If we're gonna do this uh well, there's no direct answer to how we can decarbonize um a certain mineral or or or get it to the best uh possible green credentials. It's about doing everything we can along the way. So, giving this a real-world example, I'll talk about the green lithium refinery, which is being built um in Teesside in the UK. It's a hard rock lithium refinery. Uh, and the way that it goes about uh doing this is uh first and foremost, is the technology selection that they have selected uh for the refineries. So, unlike many other uh refining technologies that may be adopted in, say, China, uh GreenLithium's adopted an alkali leak processing technology, which comes with a lot of efficiencies to it. So it's already by design a lot more efficient in the processing, a lot a lot less waste, um, uses a lot less carbon. But then there is also uh the little things you can do along the way. There's um heat recovery, so where where things are heated up in the calcinization process, they're reintroduced later on um for heating other things. And so that then it's selection on fuels. Uh, you know, where can there be a high you know in the calcinization? Can it be um electrically calcined? Can it be um a combination of natural gas and hydrogen? And then eventually full hydrogen um calcinization. So you've got the technology, you've got all the various different sums of the parts of the process and of how you can reduce, but then you've got the location. Can the location give you those further carbon reduction um abilities? So being near uh abundant renewable electricity in Teesside, it's windy. They're not there's a lot of wind turbines out in the North Sea that uh are generating a lot of renewable electricity that come on shore right in Teesside. One I really then like and enjoy is what Green Lithium have done with their co-product. It produces an aluminium silicate as a co-product, uh, and they have basically developed a market and got lots of interested uh customers in the construction industry that want to take this as a product. So it's exactly to what I res was saying. It's to it's you know, using the whole animal, nose to tail and making sure there's nothing left.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

That's great. Thanks, Rich. And um, talking, I'm not sure if the analogy of eating the whole animal works, what I'm going to ask next, but maybe the sum of all parts does um if we turn the conversation to circularity. Um Juan Ignacio, what are the demand dynamics and involving global policies that are impacting copper markets, in particular when we look at circularity? I think about 30% of copper is recycled, but copper, I think the biggest demand for copper is still in the construction industry, and the time that copper stays in a building is uh quite a long time, so it's not as though it's readily available. So, what are the implications for this move for greater circularity in the EU, as you mentioned, on the on the copper market, and how how's that going to play out?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

Well, indeed, what around 40% of the world's copper demand is met with uh recyclable copper, and that's a very good news. Going to the to the question, today we see that there's two big things that are shaping the copper markets right now. First, the demand is being driven by the mega trends that we mentioned electrification, digitalization, urbanization. And these are very uh copper intensive. And second, governments are are trying to figure out how to secure the supply responsibly. Uh area recycling helps, but it won't be enough to meet the growing demand. Uh we will need new mines and new refineries, and that means faster permits, clear rules, supportive policy that actually encourage investment instead of slowing it down. It's very necessary to mention. I mean, if if the copper demand will double by 2040, the world must bring online an equivalent of one escondida. Escondida mine is the largest copper mine in the world. We need one escondida a year for the next 15 years. So the real challenge here is to close the gap and to make sure that ambition and executions go hand in hand. We need that.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

And just to press on that a little bit, so um uh absolutely received message received well that there's always going to be a gap. But I guess some folk might ask um, should the industry be looking to see how more copper can be recycled, or do you think that it's maxed out there that um as much copper has been recycled as is possible?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

We're seeing that uh the uh recycling uh industry is is gonna grow a little bit, but the point is that it is impossible to meet the demand with only recycling. We need both. We need more mining and more recycling.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

And and Richard, in lithium and the batch industries he generally generally, lithium and nickel, for example, um, recycling rates still remain quite low. The UK has no primary production. Is this an opportunity for the UK to play a greater role and other non-producing countries play a greater role in building the infrastructure for circularity, for recycling? The the middle of the value chain, as you mentioned in your opening remarks.

Richard Taylor:

Absolutely. It's uh midstream. If you have not got uh these uh natural resources um in in your geology, then how can you come to any kind of partnership or hold any kind of strategic uh standing in a partnership with anybody? You know, you need to bring somebody to something to the table. So, you know, here in the UK, what what what can we bring to this uh to this table? Well, you know, we do have um a few uh minerals that have been looked at uh and starting to be produced in very small quantities at the moment in Cornwall, and they're doing a good the guys down there are doing a great job. Um but you know that there does need to be more. And how can we do that? Well, we can go into the arena of uh the midstream and the refining, and and this is what the UK traditionally, uh looking on the northeast uh coast of England, has been fantastic at uh processing, chemical processing, steel production, uh petrochemicals, everything like that it's completely set up for. It's got the workforces, the deep water ports, the energy, um, and and and the know-how. So it's a a prime opportunity to use areas of legacy industry, and of course, sorry the energy. Uh it's got the opportunity to use this um legacy sort of brownfield in industry sites for the midstream, whether it's the rare earth or whether it's uh lithium refining. And it's it's not just green lithium that have cottoned onto this, it's many. It's Tease Valley lithium, it's um it's there's lots going on up there. And so I think primary refining is a big one, but also then, as we say, the recycling part of it.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

And of course, China is um the biggest recycler because of their huge domestic market, but also because they import um some secondary materials, some uh end-of-life materials. Would a policy correction also have to be for the UK and other countries who don't have that natural endowment be to loosen the what is allowed into their country to be recycled? Otherwise, these midstream um industries that you want to build won't have the feedstock to um to survive.

Richard Taylor:

Absolutely, absolutely. We we should be prioritizing getting those um batteries and keeping those batteries and the materials in them in the country. Um it's uh yeah, it it's it's not been given the focus that it needs, uh, but you're very right. I think in time uh there's gonna be an awakening and we're all gonna know it.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Wait, so we've heard a lot about technology um and how that's been applied to the mind. I just want to have a spend a little bit of time focusing on um AI, artificial intelligence, and you know, depending who you listen to today, there's either the the doomongers who say this is going to strip out jobs and um de-skill, when there's others who say that this is going to enable humans to be kind of more productive and focus on what's really important, especially in the backdrop of declining populations. But what do you see, Juan Ignacio, um, regarding technologies and the solutions we are seeing that they can bring to advance things like um exploration or um improved productivity or recovery and even sustainability? What have you seen in the copper industry?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

Well, what we see is really exciting times for technology, especially in copper. Um, when you see Europe and Japan, we're seeing an impressive recycling system that keeps all the material in circulation. Um in Latin America, companies are finding very smart ways to manage waters, like using desalinization and recycled water for mining operations. Um there are some minings that are uh really solving this problem uh at 100% uh using water from the ocean. Uh in Canada and Australia, uh we have new exploration tools that are helping find deposit much, much faster and with less impact. And these are based on artificial intelligence models uh and and also more efficient drilling. So we see technologies. And when you see exploration, when we talk about exploration, we're basically talking about the RD of mining, research and development of mining. And it's essential if we want to keep the supply growing, they go hand in hand. We need skilled people and we need better and new technologies to make it faster and to make it more sustainable.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Yeah, and as long as I've been in the industry, um, it's always been a concern about how does the industry build a pipeline of good talent and how does it attract talented people and rather than then going to other more um popular industries. And I think now with the technology that the industry has to automate mines and control mines remotely, means that the control centers can be nearer urban centers and be more kind of family friendly. So maybe that's one of my thing. Yeah. Um Rez, you gave us a great um rundown of all the different sort of innovations and technology, but um when you uh when you in in your remarks, but one of the things I picked up on there was around surveillance and um satellite imagery. And with your hat on as a former trader, um, you know what I was thinking is that if you're a trading, you've got to have some very rapid transactions. It's quite hard to do the due diligence, as we mentioned, but won't surveillance help on that? So you won't need to have certifications and due diligence so much. You could actually do remote sensing and satellite imagery. And I was in China the other day in the tech hubs of um China, and there was a huge emphasis on what they call low-altitude economy, essentially drones and coupled with surveillance. Is that going to be the future of how we monitor mines, which we previously up until now see as being remote?

Erez Ichilov:

I think it's more a tool within the industry for uh for oversight and for control and for enabling the embedding of real-time responses on anything from uh from safety to operations, uh, et cetera. It could be, of course, used as well for um for just you know keeping security and safety and uh and and those uh those aspects. And of course, from a different angle, um data collection uh at the at the exploration phases and uh and later on, as was already mentioned here. There is, of course, a level and actually uh you know in in infrastructure and earth-moving uh contractors and clients have been using uh drones for for several years now to to basically monitor and to uh audit in essence um the uh reports and bills that are that are then um provided to the uh to the customer and uh and and cross-reference. We do see, of course, um you know that the trading and online trading and fast-moving trading and algorithms associated with that, whether that's in uh inequity in in money in uh in cryptocurrency and in in physical commodities are are becoming more and more important. Uh in in essence, you have uh machines trading against machines and algorithms uh trading against algorithms. We we're gonna need intermediates still and uh the data to be analyzed and packed and served as something that's that's usable without um without being processed too heavily uh in real time by The commercial partners?

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Juan Ignacio, uh thinking then about the resilience of uh supply chains, you mentioned that we'd have to build a new Escondida every year to meet the demand. If you're thinking from the point of view of the downstream or of national security and countries trying to secure supplies of copper, what's the what's the strategy to make supply chains uh more stable?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

Um okay, well, thank you for for that question. First, I would like to mention, I would like to mention that um we're transitioning today from a fossil fuel intensive world to a material intensive world. When we look at the downstream, when we look at the manufacturers of technologies, uh we see that there's huge uh challenges, right? Uh in this fight between the materials um around the world, we see more and more that uh the world, the end user, the downstream, is demanding uh certain things that are not uh wholly price. Price is not everything, it's a big component. But uh they're trying to choose that material that is circular, that is available, they're looking for responsible production for carbon uh carbon footprint and uh for material efficiency. So there's a huge, huge competition. Some big countries and societies and companies are making sure that uh that copper uh its uh copper and other materials are are available. Uh good examples are Argentina today, the United States, uh many places in Europe and especially in Asia.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great, thank you. And this is uh potentially a controversial topic, but I feel I can't go without asking it. Um I what we've what we've seen recently coming out of the present US administration is executive orders to start to look at the development of deep sea minerals, which covers these um many of these critical minerals. It's been called a battery um in a rock. Do you see, and there's potential that some of these minerals might start commercial production, some of these developments might start commercial production in the next uh two or three years. Do you think that the deep sea minerals are going to play a part in the future minerals mix?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

T he topic of of today is that the US is doing a lot to secure and to allow and to unleash mining in the United States. And they're taking steps that are clear. Uh we need to see them in action, but uh but the but there's some steps uh that they've been taking uh to clearly increment the production of copper in the United States.

Erez Ichilov:

I think that deep sea mining will gradually become part of the uh part of the upstream, and it's not necessarily an American phenomenon. We're talking about uh international waters, and I heard that um I believe the nor Norwegians are looking at that, and the Chinese are looking at that, and so on. So this uh, you know, it doesn't solve for everything, but uh, but it could add, um, especially I suppose for uh for NMC, because I believe uh yeah, there's a lot of uh manganese and some cobalt in these in most of these in most of these nodules that uh that could be part of the issue. But we need so many, you know, the quantum of of of what we need in the next uh in the next decades to actually meet the demand of all the man for to to to match all these mega trends that my colleagues were uh were talking of earlier. You know, we won't uh be able to recycle our way out of it as much as I am involved in in recycling uh projects and in urban mining, etc. And it won't be just one region or one uh, you know, whether oceanic or uh or terrestrial type. We'll just have to do everything everywhere and all at once, like the I think there was a movie called like that a few years ago. And and that will be the the approach. So it's more about how we do it. We have to do it uh safely, both uh uh onshore and uh and and offshore.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great. Well, thanks so much. I I'd like to end on kind of a little bit of a crystal ball um closing and looking at the future. And uh Juana Ignacio, you you're optimistic, of course, about the demand and the need for uh more and more copper. What could go wrong and how can we overcome it? Um I'm thinking that in the US um and in the OECD countries generally, where now we're bringing back onshore some of these mining projects. And if we're successful in um expediting some or at least shortening the permitting uh process, what about local communities who aren't used to seeing so much mining as is likely to happen? Are they going to be uh uh a hindrance to producing these minerals and these these metals? And how do we overcome that?

Juan Ignacio Diaz:

Well, definitely uh you're right. Um we need more copper. I mean, we don't need more copper only for the local uh economy. We need more copper, uh we need more copper to meet the demand, to meet the demand of the society in order to have uh a more sustainable world. I mean, the world, the people, the society are demanding electrical vehicles, renewable energies, uh data centers, technology. You want to use phones, we want to use computers, the internet. Well, we need more copper. So this is not an option. It will double. We need to produce more. And I see that the US is taking steps to uh help permitting. That's the biggest bottleneck that we have, right? And we're not asking uh um the world to be more flexible in the requirement for a mining, for a copper mine. We need faster permitting, we need to shorten the time. So you cannot take 17 years for a copper mine. So we're talking about deep uh sea mining. That's an amazing technology, it may work, but how long will it take?

Assheton Stewart Carter:

So if we don't have a magnanimous and um forward-looking local populations, we need strong leadership to make this happen and complete the transition uh safely. Um, Erez and Richard, um, for you two, looking towards 2026 and beyond, what are the trends and disruptors that you believe will shape the critical minerals landscape? Um, I'll start with you, Richard.

Richard Taylor:

Well, just as a statement, I think I'll say that uh the energy transition is a materials transition. Whoever builds clean, transparent, circular supply chains will own the future. If you're a country that's been blessed with natural resources and critical minerals that are a part of this emerging uh economy, then that's great. You've you know got to get good at uh extracting them in the most um friendly and an efficient way possible. But then everyone has other things to play for, so or other things to uh to play their role in. Uh London as a finance capital, for instance, um, but also uh the UK and Europe as a potential midstream, big midstream part of this, and then downstream manufacturing to add that. So there's plenty of things people need to play for. What governments need to realise is that you can't make a partnership with anybody if you haven't got something to leverage. So you need to get good at something, or you need to bring something to the party to be able to be part of one of these alliances. And I think that's what people are starting to realize, is that's what the future is going to be look like.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Perfect. Loud and clear. Close us out with the one trend that we haven't yet heard that we should be monitoring over the next few years, that's going to affect the critical minerals industry.

Erez Ichilov:

If there are substantial um energy savings in terms of how data is is processed, how uh how much electricity AI actually uh consumes, similar to what happened with Bitcoin a few years ago when the energy required for um for proof of work went down by 99% because some of the smart guys uh for solved for something. Um so that's potentially uh you know a disruption in terms of the demand for electricity and then for uh materials that uh that will be required to uh to generate and to uh and to distribute and to uh and to store this uh this energy and another thing, but that's in terms of uh how we make our energy, uh nuclear fusion.

Assheton Stewart Carter:

Great, thank you. Um, that's a great way to finish, and that's quite a wide-ranging conversation we've had, taking us from critical minerals mining to data mining. And Erez almost took us off on a tangent into nuclear fusion and fission, but we'll save that for the uh resourcing tomorrow conference. So it just leads me to thank the panel. Thank you very much for this. Thank you, Juana Ignacio, thank you, Richard, for joining us. Um, and we look forward to continuing the discussion later next month. The minerals and metals that our speakers have discussed today are all critical for the energy transition. And it is clear from this discussion that their future depends on responsible production, innovation, a greater emphasis on circularity, especially recycling, and policy that encourages value chain partnerships and an honest appraisal of countries' economies' comparative advantage. Please check out the rest of this special series Resourcing Tomorrow Podcasts on the TDI Suits and Boots Podcast channel. We hope to see you at this year's event where the conversation on the critical minerals set to shape the next decade will be continued. And you can hear more from Edith, Juan, Ignacio, and Richard. I'm Ashton Stewart Carter. Thank you for listening.