TETHYS, a Turkish-incorporated critical minerals and strategic infrastructure platform with projects across Eurasia, and Hartree Metals LLC, a subsidiary of the global commodities firm Hartree Partners LP — a leading independent commodities trading and asset management company — have entered into a life-of-mine offtake and commercial prepayment arrangement to support concentrate exports from the Cataltepe polymetallic mining project in north-western Türkiye.
The agreement establishes a long-term commercial partnership between the two companies, anchored on the Cataltepe operation. Production from the mine is expected to be processed at the Kalkım flotation facility, generating zinc, lead, and copper concentrates for export to international smelting markets.
Under the arrangement, Hartree Metals has provided a commercial advance payment to support the restart of operations and ongoing production activities, and will purchase and export 100% of the zinc, lead, and copper concentrates produced for the life of the operation. Production at Cataltepe is expected to commence shortly, with monthly shipments increasing progressively as operations ramp up.
The transaction demonstrates a shared commercial understanding of the project and a mutual commitment to establishing reliable concentrate supply chains in Türkiye. For TETHYS, the agreement represents the commercial activation of its flagship Turkish operation and a significant milestone in its broader strategy to develop a multi-country portfolio of critical mineral assets across Eurasia. For Hartree Metals, it signifies a deepening of its commercial engagement with Türkiye’s expanding mining sector.
Prof. Dr Leyla Keser, Chairperson of TETHYS Gateway Trading LLC, said: “The Cataltepe offtake agreement is a landmark transaction for TETHYS and a strong endorsement of the project’s commercial potential. We are delighted to be partnering with Hartree Metals as our long-term trading partner and look forward to building on this relationship as TETHYS continues to develop its portfolio of mineral assets across the region.”
The MINEX Forum team is delighted to participate in the upcoming Uzbekistan–Turkey Business Forum on 5 May at the Hilton Hotel. This event serves as a vital precursor to our broader regional discussions, focusing on concrete industrial proposals and joint investment ventures.
The forum is a collaborative effort between OSTIM, the Ministry of Mining Industry and Geology of Uzbekistan, and TMK. It offers a deep dive into Uzbekistan’s ambitious industrial roadmap, specifically focusing on critical minerals and deep processing.
Key highlights include presentations on:
The R&D Park for critical minerals.
Technopark initiatives for high-value metal processing.
Graphtech’s latest mining developments.
Our representatives will be on the ground to discuss how these initiatives align with the broader goals of value creation and regional connectivity that we champion at MINEX. We invite our colleagues and partners to join us for a day of high-level networking and strategic planning.
In the early 1990s, while the West was celebrating the “End of History” and the triumph of globalized trade, Deng Xiaoping issued a quiet prophecy: “The Middle East has oil; China has rare earths.”
For three decades, that statement was treated as an industrial footnote. Today, it has become the defining thesis of a new, colder era of geopolitics. In the latest episode of the Raw Matters podcast, hosts Peter Tom Jones and Julia Poliscanova sat down with Albéric Mongrenier, Executive Director of the European Initiative for Energy Security (EIES), to peel back the layers of Europe’s strategic “naivety.”
The verdict? Europe’s transition to clean energy isn’t just an environmental project—it is a massive transfer of strategic dependency that could, if left unmanaged, leave the continent’s power grids and military hardware under the remote control of Beijing.
The Cyber Trojan Horse in the Power Grid
The conversation begins with a startling reality check regarding the hardware of the energy transition. We often talk about “critical minerals” as raw commodities—lithium, cobalt, copper. But Mongrenier points to a more immediate, digital threat: the inverter.
Every solar panel, wind turbine, and EV charger requires an inverter to convert DC power to AC. Today, approximately 80% of new solar installations in Europe use Chinese inverters, with a massive share provided by a single company: Huawei.
“These devices are connected to the internet,” Mongrenier warns. “They are entry doors for cyberattacks.” This creates two distinct levels of vulnerability:
Intelligence Harvesting: By controlling the inverters, external actors can map Europe’s energy consumption and grid behavior with more granularity than European governments themselves.
The “Kill Switch”: Mongrenier references reports from the US and UK regarding hidden “kill switches” discovered in Chinese-made components. In a conflict scenario, the theoretical ability to remotely disable Europe’s energy system—shutting down wind farms and solar arrays at the click of a button—is no longer science fiction.
Dual-Use: The F-35 and the Wind Turbine
One of the most persistent myths of the “Green Deal” is that critical minerals are purely “clean tech” materials. In reality, the minerals powering the energy transition are the exact same materials required for modern warfare.
“NATO came up with its own list of 12 defense-critical minerals late in 2024,” Mongrenier notes. The overlap is nearly total:
Rare Earths: Essential for the permanent magnets in EV motors, but also for the guidance systems of missiles and the engines of F-35 fighter jets.
Graphite: Used in battery anodes, but also vital for the hulls of submarines.
Titanium & Cobalt: The bread and butter of both high-performance turbines and military superalloys.
This dual-use nature has created a “Mineral Security Trap.” If Europe cannot secure its own supply of these minerals, it loses more than just its ability to hit climate targets—it loses the industrial base required to defend itself.
A Tale of Two Strategies: The US Stick vs. The EU Paper
The podcast highlights a widening gap between how Washington and Brussels are reacting to the Chinese monopoly.
The American “All-of-Government” Blitz
Under both the Biden and now the Trump administrations, the US has moved with aggressive speed. The US has set a hard deadline: January 2027. By then, defense contractors must purge Chinese rare earths, titanium, and tantalum from their supply chains.
“The US uses a big stick,” says Mongrenier. They aren’t just asking for change; they are mandating it while simultaneously throwing tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and equity stakes at domestic projects like MP Materials.
The European “Silo” Problem
In contrast, Europe’s response remains “timid.” Poliscanova points out that Europe is still hampered by siloed decision-making. While the US treats mineral security as a singular mission across all departments, the EU is split between various Directorates-General (DGs) that often fail to communicate.
Furthermore, Europe remains obsessed with the “business case.” “Strategic infrastructure does not always have a business case,” Poliscanova argues. “Sometimes you just invest because it’s a critical asset. We need to forget about the short-term profit and think about resilience.”
The Axis of Minerals: Russia, Iran, and China
The discussion takes a darker turn when addressing the current conflict in the Middle East. Mongrenier points out that the “axis” of Russia, Iran, and China is not a loose association—it is a functional industrial alliance.
Take the drones currently saturating battlefields in Ukraine and the Middle East. Whether they are Iranian Shahed drones or Russian variants, their supply chains lead back to China. “90% of these drones are battery-powered,” Mongrenier says. “If we build a ‘European Drone Wall’ for our own defense, but the batteries and minerals come from China, have we actually improved our security?”
The Path Forward: Ending the Naivety
As the episode concludes, the hosts and guest outline a roadmap for a more resilient Europe:
Aggregating Demand: Europe must connect the car industry and the defense sector to send a massive, unified “demand signal” to miners and refiners outside of China.
The “Carrot and the Stick”: Europe needs to provide the financial “carrots” (subsidies and public procurement) while wielding the “stick” (vetting components for cyber risks and mandating non-Chinese supply chains for critical defense hardware).
Industrial Sovereignty: 2026 and 2027 are viewed as the “midterm” years for European leadership to finally treat energy and mineral security as the same issue.
The message is clear: Europe’s “naivety” has been a luxury of a more stable world. In 2026, as missiles fly and megawatts become the new currency of power, that luxury has officially run out. To save its climate, Europe must first secure its minerals—and to secure its minerals, it must finally learn to play the game of “Realpolitik.”
The European Union’s largest economies have rejected a US attempt to resolve a long-running dispute over metals tariffs, injecting fresh uncertainty into the ratification of a transatlantic trade deal that has already faced repeated delays since it was first agreed last July.
Germany and France voiced frustration in a closed meeting of EU envoys after the US recently changed how it calculates tariffs on hundreds of products containing steel and aluminium — a modification Washington presented as an olive branch to address European concerns. But after EU officials and industry groups crunched the numbers, the adjustment proved to fall well short of expectations. France and Germany noted that the tweak actually worsens the tariff situation for roughly half of the affected products, while VDMA, a major German industrial association, calculated that the average tariff rate for affected companies had risen from 21% to 26%.
The European Commission said it is considering possible responses, though it has not yet specified what form these might take. EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič raised the metals tariff issue during a visit to Washington last week but failed to achieve a breakthrough. Both sides have agreed to continue technical discussions, and the Commission told EU envoys that more fully implementing some of the bloc’s existing trade deal commitments could help unlock concessions from the US side.
The metals dispute traces back to August last year, when Washington widened a 50% tariff on steel and aluminium to cover hundreds of additional products containing these metals — a move that drew accusations from Brussels that the US was already violating the spirit of the July agreement. Under that initial deal, the EU agreed to eliminate tariffs on US industrial goods in exchange for a 15% ceiling on most EU exports, a lopsided arrangement the bloc accepted to keep President Donald Trump engaged on Ukraine and avoid a broader trade rupture.
The path to ratification has since been repeatedly disrupted. EU lawmakers paused the process twice — first after Trump threatened to take Greenland, and again after the US Supreme Court invalidated Washington’s global tariff regime. More recently both sides had expressed a renewed desire to conclude ratification, with EU member states and lawmakers simultaneously negotiating amendments including an expiration clause and stronger safeguards for European industries — provisions the Commission has warned could derail the accord entirely.
Kazakhstan rarely commands the attention its copper endowment deserves. Producing roughly 900,000 tonnes annually from 35 million tonnes of registered reserves, it accounts for approximately 4% of global copper output — a share comparable to many of the names that dominate industry headlines. Yet Western investment community engagement with the sector remains shallow relative to the opportunity, and the geological case for what remains undiscovered is, if anything, more compelling than the production figures alone suggest.
At a recent British-Kazakh Society webinar on copper in Kazakhstan — convened jointly with the Embassy of Kazakhstan in London and the UK Department of Business and Trade — geologists, exploration executives, and market analysts gathered to examine the sector in detail. The discussion made one thing clear: Kazakhstan’s copper story is not simply one of existing production. It is one of a sector arriving at a structural inflection point at precisely the moment the global market needs it most.
The Resource Base
Kazakhstan’s copper reserves are concentrated in two mature producing provinces. The Zhezkazgan deposit in central Kazakhstan is one of the great sediment-hosted copper systems on earth, developed since the post-war Soviet era and still the backbone of national production. Eastern Kazakhstan contributes largely through complex polymetallic deposits, of which Aktogai — a world-class porphyry system — is the most prominent. Together these provinces underpin an annual output of around 900,000 tonnes, placing Kazakhstan comfortably among the world’s significant copper producers.
The registered reserve figure of 35 million tonnes, however, almost certainly understates the country’s true endowment. USGS analysis of undiscovered global copper potential consistently identifies central and eastern Kazakhstan as among the most prospective territories on earth for porphyry copper systems. Two distinct porphyry belts cross the country. The younger Valerianov Belt connects, across the Uzbek border, to the super-giant Kalmakyr deposit; that belt, within Kazakhstan, remains largely undrilled. A substantial portion of central Kazakhstan lies beneath Aral Sea basin sediments with no surface outcrop and minimal modern exploration coverage. What has been found is not broadly what exists.
The Data Opportunity
Unlocking Kazakhstan’s exploration frontier depends significantly on data — and here, material progress is underway. The National Geological Service has scanned 97.5% of its Soviet-era archive, a vast repository of maps, drill logs, and technical reports accumulated over decades of intensive geological work. An AI and OCR programme now underway aims to render that material machine-readable by mid-2027, and a unified digital subsoil platform will eventually integrate it with online licensing and compliance functions.
The Soviet geological archive has long been one of Central Asia’s most underleveraged assets — rich in detail, largely inaccessible to modern analytical methods. As that changes, the information barrier that has historically complicated early-stage investment decisions in Kazakhstan will begin to fall. The same technology has implications for Uzbekistan, Mongolia, and other jurisdictions carrying similar archival burdens.
The Exploration Dynamic
Despite over 3,500 active exploration licences — a market that has grown dramatically since Kazakhstan’s current mining code opened competitive licence pegging — major mining companies outnumber junior explorers among active operators. This is structurally unusual for a jurisdiction at Kazakhstan’s stage of geological maturity. Seventy percent of the world’s mineral discoveries are made by junior companies. The early-stage risk capital that drives discovery is underdeveloped relative to the opportunity.
That is beginning to shift. Aurora Minerals Group, a Kazakh-rooted exploration services company with international technical partnerships, has spent years systematically de-risking early-stage copper targets — culminating in First Quantum Minerals taking an earn-in position on the Lakeside porphyry project in the northern Balkhash district. A second project targeting sediment-hosted copper in the Tenis Basin, an analogue setting to the Zhezkazgan deposit, is entering its first field season on ground only recently opened by the government for exploration. The model — patient local knowledge combined with international technical and capital partnerships — is one the market needs more of.
Market Dynamics and Kazakhstan’s Position
The global copper market is broadly balanced today, but the trajectory is clear. A supply deficit of around 140,000 tonnes is expected this year, widening materially into next. Exchange stocks, inflated by the US tariff distortion that pulled copper from China and Europe into COMEX warehouses at premiums of up to $3,000 per tonne above LME, are elevated but unwinding. Underneath the short-term noise, the structural picture is one of tightening supply against demand that governments and industries across the developed world are now treating as a strategic priority rather than a market variable.
Kazakhstan sits well within that supply picture. It produces 24 of the 36 minerals identified in the UK’s critical minerals strategy. Its copper is exported into global supply chains that are increasingly subject to scrutiny over reliability and geopolitical exposure. The Astana International Financial Centre provides an internationally anchored legal framework. There is explicit political will to support long-term foreign investment — not extractive engagement, but sustained industrial partnership.
The friction points are real: dual reserve reporting systems under GKZ and KAZRC create disclosure complexity for internationally oriented investors; permitting timelines warrant attention; and Kazakhstan’s position between China and a reengaging Western investment community requires careful navigation. None of these are disqualifying. All are manageable with the right local knowledge and structuring.
The copper market’s structural shift is not speculative. The demand is real, the supply constraint is real, and the timeline for bringing new production online is unforgiving. Kazakhstan, with a large established production base, a geologically compelling frontier, and an improving investment environment, is one of the few jurisdictions that can contribute meaningfully to closing that gap — if the engagement comes early enough to matter.
The European Union will not retreat from its industrial sovereignty agenda despite Chinese threats of retaliation, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has declared, issuing one of his most combative statements yet on the deteriorating state of EU-China trade relations.
Speaking exclusively to Euronews, Šefčovič said the bloc would “always” defend the interests of its companies and workers. “We will fight tooth and nail for every European job, for every European company, for every open sector, if we see they are treated unfairly,” he said, responding to Beijing’s threat of countermeasures over the EU’s Industrial Acceleration Act and its Cybersecurity Act — two pieces of legislation China has accused of discriminating against its companies.
Relations between Brussels and Beijing have deteriorated sharply over the past year. China has tightened export controls on rare earths vital to Europe’s clean technology and defence industries and restricted semiconductor chips essential to the automotive sector, intensifying pressure on already strained supply chains. In response, the EU has pressed ahead with legislation tightening market access for foreign companies and potentially restricting Chinese telecoms firms’ presence across the bloc — prompting Beijing to warn that the EU should not underestimate China’s “firm resolve” to safeguard its interests.
Šefčovič rejected characterisations of the situation as a looming trade war but was unequivocal that Brussels would not operate under pressure. “We never threaten our partners, and we certainly don’t do it through the media,” he said. “What we need is strategic patience and a great deal of courage.” He noted that a trade conflict is easy to start but difficult to exit — a warning he appeared to direct as much at Beijing as at domestic audiences.
At the heart of the EU’s grievances is a trade deficit with China that reached €359.3 billion in 2025 — a level Šefčovič described as “simply unsustainable” and one showing no signs of improvement despite repeated EU calls for rebalancing. Brussels is also growing increasingly concerned that Chinese exports being shut out of the US market by higher tariffs are being redirected toward Europe, compounding existing overcapacity concerns.
Šefčovič said he had invited China’s foreign minister to Brussels for a comprehensive assessment of the current state of relations, stressing that what he wants is “constructive engagement” rather than escalation. He defended the EU’s industrial policy ambitions by pointing to equivalent frameworks elsewhere: “There are very strong industrial policies in China. You have the same in the US, in Canada, in Japan and in Korea. So nobody should be surprised if the European Union responds in kind.”
Ferrexpo has suspended the listing and trading of its shares on the London Stock Exchange with effect from 7:30 a.m. on 1 May, as the Ukraine-focused iron ore producer failed to complete a planned capital raise and publish its 2025 annual financial results by the deadline it had previously set itself.
The suspension will remain in place until the company completes its audit, publishes its annual report and financial statements for 2025, and implements a financing solution — with no certainty provided on when, or whether, trading will resume. “There is no certainty regarding the expected timing of the lifting of the suspension of listing and the resumption of trading in shares, if it happens at all,” Ferrexpo said in its statement.
The company has received indicative, non-binding expressions of interest from institutional investors in a potential recapitalisation of more than $100 million, but was unable to finalise the transaction before the end of April. Ferrexpo has described an equity raise of at least $100 million as the only viable solution to meet current obligations and provide sufficient working capital for the next 18 months. Without a successful financing outcome, the group has sufficient available cash only until approximately the end of August 2026. The company previously warned that failure to complete the fundraise could force it to file for insolvency.
The financial crisis has unfolded against a backdrop of severe operational disruption. In the first quarter of 2026, Ferrexpo reduced iron ore production by 72% year-on-year to 592,750 metric tonnes, and by 45% compared to the previous quarter, as Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector largely suspended production activities. A limited resumption at reduced capacity occurred only at the end of February.
China has launched a formal diplomatic offensive against the European Union’s Industrial Acceleration Act, warning that the bloc’s strategy to boost domestic manufacturing could violate World Trade Organisation rules and constitute institutional discrimination against foreign investors — and signalling that retaliatory countermeasures may follow if dialogue fails.
China’s Ministry of Commerce delivered formal feedback to the European Commission on Friday and went public with its criticism on Monday, with a spokesperson arguing that the Act imposes numerous restrictive requirements on foreign investment. At the heart of Beijing’s objection is the EU’s use of preferential “EU origin” tags in public procurement and public support policies — conditions the Chinese government says amount to investment barriers and discriminatory treatment of non-European companies.
The spokesperson said China is willing to engage in dialogue with the EU to mitigate the policy’s impact, but made clear that if those discussions fail to produce results, Beijing is prepared to take countermeasures to “firmly safeguard” its business interests. The European Commission’s response was measured. Spokesperson Olof Gill said the bloc’s proposals are “carefully calibrated to achieve certain economic wider goals for our citizens” and that the Commission remains open to engagement with global partners.
The Industrial Acceleration Act, launched by the European Commission in March, targets three strategic sectors: clean technologies, car manufacturers and energy-intensive industries including aluminium, steel and cement. It includes domestic content thresholds of 70% EU-content for electric vehicles, 25% for aluminium and 25% for cement. The measures are designed to direct public procurement and state support toward European producers, reducing industrial dependencies and strengthening economic sovereignty.
European Commissioner for Industry Stéphane Séjourné framed the initiative as a direct response to a mounting employment crisis. More than 200,000 European jobs have been lost in energy-intensive industries and the automotive sector since 2024, with projections pointing to 600,000 further losses in car-making alone this decade. The proposal must still be approved by the European Parliament and the European Council before it can enter into force.
A new policy brief warns that Europe’s ambitious 2030 targets for critical raw materials are under threat, not from a lack of resources, but from a failure to scale industrial operations quickly enough. With less than five years to go, experts are calling for urgent action to de-risk investment and harmonise regulations across the continent.
The delivery gap
A collaborative report from REESOURCE and ten other Horizon Europe projects has highlighted that the EU’s transition to green and digital technologies is currently hampered by significant implementation barriers. Despite the benchmarks set by the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA)—which mandates 10% domestic extraction, 40% processing, and 25% recycling by 2030—the window for delivery is rapidly closing.
The brief identifies that the primary risk to these goals is not geological scarcity, but rather “delayed scale-up, fragmented governance, and investment uncertainty”.
Key barriers to industrial scale-up
Stakeholders from across the value chain, including mining companies, research organisations, and SMEs, have identified several critical bottlenecks:
The “Valley of Death”: Limited access to finance for pilot and first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plants remains the most significant hurdle. Market volatility and price uncertainty frequently stall projects between the research phase and commercial deployment.
Regulatory Red Tape: Fragmented waste classifications and inconsistent cross-border transport rules for raw materials continue to undermine the efficiency of recycling flows.
Permitting Delays: While the CRMA introduces “fast-track” timelines, the actual administrative capacity and interpretation varies wildly across Member States, damaging investor confidence.
Social Acceptance: The report suggests that failing to engage local communities early can lead to delays that “outweigh financial or regulatory barriers combined,” particularly in primary extraction projects.
Recommendations for action
To course-correct, the policy brief recommends moving toward milestone-based funding pathways and introducing mandatory traceability requirements—such as Digital Product Passports—for devices containing rare-earth magnets. Furthermore, it stresses that primary extraction and recycling must be developed in parallel to ensure a resilient European supply chain.
As the 2030 deadline approaches, the focus must shift from legislative design to the “operational delivery” of industrial facilities.
Australian mining company Bindi Metals will commence its first drilling programme at the Ravni high-grade gold project in Serbia’s southwestern Raska mining district in May, after securing land access across priority drilling locations, the company confirmed in an ASX filing on Wednesday.
The maiden diamond drilling programme has been designed to test multiple high-priority targets across the Drenjak and Rujak prospects as well as several scout drilling locations. At Drenjak, the programme will focus on high-grade surface mineralisation, while Rujak will be tested for broad mineralised zones. Serbian contractor Reflex Drilling has been engaged to carry out the work.
Ravni covers 30 square kilometres of tenure within the Western Tethyan Magmatic Belt — a prolific geological corridor that hosts numerous significant gold, copper and base metal deposits, including the Rogozna project in Serbia and the Vares deposit in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bindi Metals began exploration at Ravni in November following a binding agreement with Belgrade-based Red Creek to acquire up to an 80% interest in the project.
Beyond Ravni, Bindi Metals holds two further Serbian assets acquired from Apollo Minerals in 2024 — the Lisa antimony-gold project and the Mutnica antimony-copper project — giving the company a multi-commodity exploration portfolio across one of Europe’s most active mining jurisdictions.
