Canada unveiled 30 new partnerships and investments in critical minerals in March 2026, directing capital toward infrastructure, processing, and supply-chain links, including a CAD 165.2 million commitment across 22 projects in eight provinces announced at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention; the Canada Growth Fund separately established a commercial framework for an equity-like investment at Trail of up to CAD 400 million tied to potential germanium, antimony, and gallium offtake from Teck Resources' British Columbia facility. Canada also deepened Latin American ties, having signed a memorandum on mining sustainability with Peru in March 2026, following earlier agreements with Chile in 2024 and Argentina in March 2025, while the G7 Critical Minerals Production Alliance, chaired by Canada, has helped mobilize CAD 18.5 billion domestically.

The World Bank announced a plan to quintuple its critical-minerals business over the next five years, with President Ajay Banga unveiling the initiative on the sidelines of the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok; eight countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Egypt, India, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Mauritania, and Zambia — have already launched country compacts with multilateral development bank partners outlining reforms to licensing, geological data systems, environmental oversight, infrastructure, and local skills development. On the sidelines of the same Bangkok meetings, Korea Eximbank's chairman met with the IFC managing director and agreed to broaden cooperation in critical mineral supply chains and advanced industries including AI and digital infrastructure, with Korea Eximbank intending to link its efforts to World Bank Group multilateral platforms; separately, the chairman also met UK Export Finance's CEO to discuss expanding joint financing in decarbonization, critical mineral supply chains, and defense.

In Europe, Allied Critical Metals secured EU strategic project status for its Borralha tungsten project in Portugal, reflecting intensifying efforts to build Western tungsten supply chains. In Asia, India's USD 4.1 billion Critical Minerals Mission is showing momentum but faces the challenge of China's roughly 90 percent dominance in rare earth processing, requiring India to construct a full domestic industrial value chain. In Southeast Asia, the Philippines' Board of Investments is mapping investment opportunities in Caraga following Executive Order No. 122, which tasks the BOI with promoting critical minerals processing, refining, and downstream manufacturing; stakeholder forums and site-validation meetings with the MGB Regional Office XIII and mining companies are being used to develop an evidence-based promotion strategy aimed at shifting the country from raw ore exports to higher-value domestic activities. Finally, a commentary argues that Venezuela's critical minerals flowing to China via terrorist organizations and cartels represent a policy challenge requiring action from the Trump administration against the Caracas government's enabling role in the illicit trade.

Pakistan is positioning itself as a major critical minerals supplier, leveraging its location within the Tethyan Metallogenic Belt and an estimated $8 trillion in mineral reserves across 600,000 square kilometres, with stronger governance projected to lift annual mineral exports from roughly $3 billion to $8 billion. The centrepiece of this effort is the Reko Diq copper and gold project in Balochistan, a joint venture between Barrick Mining Corporation and Pakistani state entities, whose updated feasibility study projects a 37-year mine life and total capital investment of $8.83 billion, with first production targeted by end-2028. Phase 1 will process 45 million tonnes of ore annually, yielding approximately 240,000 tonnes of copper and 297,000 ounces of gold per year, while Phase 2, planned for 2034, doubles throughput to 90 million tonnes and raises average annual copper output to 460,000 tonnes. Financing for the project has assembled rapidly: the Asian Development Bank approved $410 million in August 2025, comprising $300 million in loans and a $110 million guarantee for Balochistan's equity stake; the IFC and World Bank followed with a $700 million concessional loan in June 2025; and the US Export-Import Bank approved $1.25 billion in December 2025, a commitment the US embassy said could unlock up to $2 billion in American mining equipment exports and support roughly 13,500 jobs across both countries. Over its full mine life, Reko Diq's probable reserves of approximately 3 billion tonnes are estimated to generate $90 billion in operating cash flow and $70 billion in free cash flow, making it the largest foreign direct investment project in Balochistan.

A research team has reported a nickel cobalt oxide and cadmium oxide composite anchored to reduced graphene oxide that performs as both a supercapacitor electrode and a hydrogen evolution catalyst; the material achieved a specific capacity of 2700 C/g at 2 A/g, an energy density of 71.2 Wh/kg, and 89.87 percent coulombic efficiency over 1,000 cycles, with the graphene scaffold credited for preserving structural integrity and charge-transport efficiency. In a separate electrode study, co-modifying nickel oxide with both cobalt and calcium via autocombustion synthesis produced a connected particle network that, when paired with activated carbon in an asymmetric device, delivered an energy density of 32.9 Wh/kg alongside strong cycling stability, with cobalt contributing additional redox-active sites and calcium acting as a structural modifier of the oxide lattice.

In electromagnetic materials, Chinese researchers demonstrated that substituting cobalt into γ′-Fe4N iron nitride shifts the dominant attenuation mechanism from dielectric to magnetic loss, enabling the 20 mol% Co-doped sample to reach a saturation magnetization of 202 emu/g and achieve reflection losses below −50 dB in the S and C bands at a matching thickness of only 1.49 mm, a result with direct relevance to stealth and radar-interference applications.

On the catalysis front, a cobalt-based electrocatalyst derived from MOF-808 and stabilized using EDTA chelation before high-temperature carbonization demonstrated oxygen reduction in acidic media with an onset potential of 0.87 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode and a current density of 7 mA/cm², positioning it as a credible platinum-free candidate for proton exchange membrane fuel cells operating in the corrosive conditions that typically degrade non-precious catalysts.

At the supply-chain level, a review of membrane-based separation processes identified nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, and related methods as a scalable and modular pathway for recovering cobalt and lithium from spent battery packs, tailings, and hydrometallurgical streams, with techno-economic analysis suggesting membranes outperform conventional solvent extraction across specific operating regimes, provided long-term stability in high-acidity and high-salinity environments can be assured.

Chinese lithium carbonate prices have retreated from 2026 highs to CNY 104,400 per tonne, while the benchmark January 2027 futures contract fell below 100,000 yuan intraday before recovering slightly — a drop of roughly 50% from May's peak of nearly CNY 200,000 per tonne. CITIC Securities forecasts a 38,000-tonne global surplus next year, while Goldman Sachs projects supply will grow 32% in 2026 and expects a 444,000-tonne global surplus by 2028. Contributing to the supply outlook, CATL's Jianxiawo mine resumed its environmental permitting review process, and major Australian operations including Bald Hill and Finniss have restarted production. A broader inventory reclassification by Shanghai Metals Market, which expanded its carbonate survey to include traders and battery cell manufacturers, pushed estimated stocks from roughly 70,000 tonnes to 169,300 tonnes, adding further downward price pressure. On the demand side, newly installed energy storage capacity in China fell 16% year-on-year in the first half of the year.

At AMG Critical Materials, three distinct signals converged in the same week: BlackRock disclosed a 3.30% capital stake in the Frankfurt-listed group, Citi trimmed its price target to EUR 50 from EUR 52 while retaining a Buy rating amid weaker commodity price assumptions, and the European Commission had recently designated AMG's Bitterfeld refinery and Zinnwald project as strategic projects under CRMA. Among Canadian developers, Canaccord Genuity cut its target to CAD 0.35 from CAD 0.85 for Critical Elements Lithium, which is advancing the Rose lithium-tantalum project in Quebec toward a forecast 204,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrate annually over 17 years. Frontier Lithium, carrying 31.1 million tonnes of reserves at its Ontario PAK deposit, traded at CAD 0.40 — near its 52-week low of CAD 0.38 — after completing in September a convertible loan restructuring that extended maturity to February 2028 and lowered the conversion price to CAD 0.455.

In Serbia, the dean of the Faculty of Mining and Geology stated that a moratorium on lithium mining in the Jadra valley is defensible only if it is time-limited with clear criteria for its termination, warning that a politically motivated moratorium without defined objectives would be the wrong approach. He called for expert multidisciplinary assessments, stronger inspection capacity, revised mining-rent structures, and early public involvement in planning, while cautioning that Serbia must avoid the "resource curse" in which local communities fail to capture the economic benefits of extraction. Separately, rising fossil fuel prices driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz are accelerating EV and renewable adoption globally, benefiting Chinese battery and electric vehicle manufacturers; global sales of new gasoline-powered cars fell below 50% of new-car sales for the first time in the first half of 2026.

SK On held its second internal research conference and awarded its grand prize to a team that developed a process replacing CNT paste with powder in LFP cathode production, reducing costs while maintaining comparable performance; additional prize-winning projects addressed large-format lithium-metal electrodes and a battery capacity degradation prediction model. Researchers at India's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre reported approximately 90% lithium recovery from seawater using a DBM–MIBK solvent extraction system with alkaline preconditioning, with scale-up and cost evaluations still pending. A review published in Frontiers in Membrane Science and Technology identified a fundamental selectivity-productivity trade-off across ion-imprinted, ion sieve, and liquid membrane types used in direct lithium extraction, and standardized performance metrics to enable cross-study comparisons. Chinese researchers demonstrated that spent lithium-ion sieves derived from cycled H1.6Mn1.6O4 can be repurposed as zinc-ion battery cathodes, achieving 101.5 mAh g⁻¹ capacity and approximately 99% Coulombic efficiency over 200 cycles. A separate study from Chinese universities reported that a low-dose MnO₂ hydrothermal process can regenerate spent LFP cathodes to near-theoretical capacity with a Li/Fe molar ratio of 0.98, offering a lower-energy alternative to conventional pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical recycling.

On the technology side, True Blue Power's Gen5 lithium-ion aircraft batteries are reported to cut aircraft weight 60% while reducing maintenance by 90% with an eight-year service life. Researchers at Offenburg University released LIBquiv, an