The 18th BRICS Summit, hosted by India in New Delhi on 12–13 September, produced its principal outcome in the form of the New Delhi Declaration affirming reliable, diversified, and resilient critical mineral supply chains, recognising sovereign rights over mineral resources, and acknowledging the role of critical minerals in zero- and low-emission energy technologies. At the concluding session, Prime Minister Narendra Modi warned against weaponising technology and critical minerals, calling the practice a hindrance to shared progress, and emphasised inclusivity in technology adoption — remarks directed implicitly at China, which controls roughly 90 percent of global rare earth processing and has imposed successive export restrictions on gallium, germanium, and other strategic minerals since 2023. Analysts observed that Modi's warning, delivered in Xi Jinping's presence, simultaneously signalled reassurance to Washington while India sought warmer bilateral ties with Beijing, reflecting New Delhi's need to avoid choosing between the two powers. Chinese President Xi, for his part, pledged open-source AI cooperation and proposed a five-point initiative covering smart manufacturing, a special economic zone partnership, and an AI training programme for Global South members, before handing the BRICS presidency to China ahead of the 2027 summit. The New Delhi Declaration expanded cooperation on solar photovoltaics, smart grids, energy storage, and critical minerals but stopped short of binding targets, funding commitments, or implementation timelines, leaving execution uncertain.

On the summit's sidelines, Modi conducted a series of bilateral meetings with strategic implications for critical minerals. His talks with South Africa covered mining partnerships and the India–SACU trade agreement, while discussions with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev focused on energy, critical minerals, and connectivity, with bilateral trade currently standing at approximately $924 million. Separately, South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung met with ADB President Masato Kanda, and both sides agreed to stabilise supply chains of critical minerals in Central Asia, with Kanda describing supply-chain security as one of the ADB's top institutional priorities.

The geopolitical backdrop at BRICS also informed a broader analytical piece examining Australia's clean-tech trilemma, arguing that dependence on Chinese solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles differs structurally from dependence on imported fossil fuels — since clean-energy equipment becomes a durable productive asset once installed — and that Australia can use today's low Chinese prices to accelerate decarbonisation while managing supply concentration risk. A separate policy analysis argued that Canada and Australia together produce approximately one-third of the world's mined lithium and uranium but continue to behave as parallel competitors rather than coordinated partners, with a November 2025 Joint Declaration of Intent establishing a ministerial process and bilateral special-envoy mechanism tasked with mapping value chains and identifying co-investment opportunities; the article identified the critical weakness as treating mines as supply chains rather than investing in the processing stages between extraction and final manufacturing. Complementing that argument, a BMO Global Metals and Mining study released ahead of the Canada Investment Summit projected that Canadian development capital expenditures will rise more than 11 percent over the next two years, with companies covered by the bank expected to spend C$350 billion on operating costs, sustaining capital, and growth projects over five years, while recommending a downstream shift into copper smelting, rare earth separation, and battery precursor materials, and suggesting that separating infrastructure investment from mine development could attract specialised infrastructure funds. An associated piece on India–Africa energy cooperation highlighted that Africa attracts only 3 percent of global energy investment despite needing more than $200 billion annually by 2030, and outlined how India's concessional Lines of Credit, International Solar Alliance membership, and BRICS 2026 Energy Ministers' Joint Communiqué provide a framework for a more development-oriented energy transition on the continent.

On the supply-chain infrastructure front, British Columbia marked a significant milestone with the opening of Portland Canal Terminal, Canada's first majority Indigenous-owned deep-sea port, co-owned by the Nisg̱a'a Nation, the Tahltan Nation Development Corporation, and Arrow Transportation Systems, located near the mineral-rich Golden Triangle in Stewart and handling approximately 300,000 tonnes of copper and gold concentrate annually; the Province of British Columbia provided a C$5 million grant to support further modernisation and wharf expansion. In the United States, recycler Nth Cycle's Project SHIELD proposed facility — capable of processing 24,000 metric tonnes of black mass per year to produce nickel mixed hydroxide precipitate and battery-grade lithium carbonate — was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy to enter negotiations for up to $100 million in support, with the company reporting a binding 10-year offtake term sheet with Trafigura valued at approximately $1.1 billion; the facility could begin operating as early as 2029, subject to approvals. Electronics recycler ERI separately positioned its underused U.S. recycling capacity as a domestic critical minerals source for the defense supply chain at a Defense Industrial Base Accelerator roundtable in Philadelphia, with participants discussing end-of-life electronics and batteries as feedstock following a July executive order directing the federal government to strengthen domestic and allied critical-material supply chains and new export restrictions on battery waste and tungsten scrap.

In the tungsten sector, two Australian-listed explorers reported material field results. Red Mountain Mining (ASX:RMX) announced strong Pioneer Project assays from systematic rock-chip sampling at its 100%-owned Montana asset, including 50 samples above 500 ppm WO₃ and 31 above 1,000 ppm WO₃, with peak values of 0.55% WO₃ at Greenstone alongside polymetallic results of up to 6.72% copper, 462 g/t silver, and 3.88 g/t gold; the project footprint has been more than doubled to 517 hectares. Stelar Metals (ASX:SLB) completed its maiden regional soil survey at the Hill of Leaders Tungsten Project in the Northern Territory, collecting 1,350 samples across approximately 50 km² with multi-element results expected in coming weeks, while UV lamping confirmed fluorescent scheelite mineralisation within host granite, opening a potential granite-scale exploration dimension ahead of maiden bedrock drilling scheduled to commence imminently; the company noted that China's tungsten export controls remain in force and that a U.S. Department of War prohibition on Chinese-sourced tungsten takes effect 1 January 2027, with ammonium paratungstate pricing at historic highs. In the UK, Technology Minerals announced a rebrand to Mantle Resilience, repositioning as a national security-focused critical minerals and manufacturing platform aligned with the UK's Strategic Defence Review 2025 and Critical Minerals Strategy (Vision 2035), with its trading ticker on the London Stock Exchange changing to MNTL on 15 September and a formal name-change general meeting scheduled for around 14 October; the company's Recyclus Group subsidiary operates industrial-scale battery recycling plants in Wolverhampton and Tipton. Finally, researchers at the University of Queensland reported that a engineered fungus could extract critical minerals from toxic waste streams, offering a potentially greener recovery pathway.

Copper prices retreated sharply from their recent peak after traders reassessed the likelihood of imminent U.S. trade action, with COMEX futures falling over 4% and Freeport-McMoRan shares dropping more than 8% in premarket trading as policy uncertainty clarified. The market remains focused on the September 30 deadline for a potential Section 232 decision, with roughly 700,000 tonnes of copper stockpiled in U.S. warehouses by traders front-running potential duties; a tariff imposition would likely widen the COMEX–LME spread, while a rejection or delay could release that inventory back to international markets and pressure global prices. The administration has been weighing initial tariff rates as high as 15% on refined copper, potentially rising to 30%, with key outstanding questions covering which refined products are covered, exemption structures, and effective dates.

At the Panguna copper project in Papua New Guinea's Bougainville region, armed men attacked and torched camp equipment on September 13, damaging mining trucks and machinery linked to Indian development partner Lloyds Metals & Energy, and assaulting personnel. Bougainville President Ishmael Toroama condemned the incident and affirmed the government's commitment to redevelopment, but the attack underscores unresolved social-licence and landowner-consent issues surrounding one of the world's largest undeveloped copper deposits, a project whose operating licence history is already contested following the revocation of Bougainville Copper Ltd's exploration rights earlier this year in favour of a 25-year lease awarded to government-owned Bougainville Minerals Ltd.

On the exploration front, Strategic Minerals reported initial assay results from infill drilling at its Redmoor tungsten-tin-copper project in Cornwall, UK, with the programme returning high-grade tungsten intercepts and confirming mineralisation continuity consistent with the existing resource model. Drilling also identified a previously unmodelled copper-tin zone in aplitic bodies beneath the Redmoor Sheeted Vein System, which the company intends to subject to further geological and metallurgical testing, with three rigs currently operating on site. Separately, Red Mountain Mining reported rock chip sampling at its Pioneer Tungsten Project in Montana that returned peak copper grades of 6.72% alongside silver at 462 g/t and gold at 3.88 g/t at the Greenstone prospect, with the company also recording consistent tungsten results across Greenstone, Glow Worm, and Lost Creek and strong copper and gold values from 50 rock chip samples, 31 of which exceeded 1,000 ppm tungsten trioxide.

Copper's role as a core grid-infrastructure input is reinforced by two demand-side developments. The cast resin power transformers market, for which copper is a critical raw material, is forecast to grow at 4–6% CAGR through 2035, driven by data centre construction, renewable energy installations, and urban electrification, with data centre procurement of 1–10 MVA units rising at an estimated 8–10% annually through the early 2030s; raw material cost volatility for copper remains a critical pricing factor for that market. At the grid level, the U.S. transmission system faces a structural copper-intensive upgrade imperative, as CAISO curtailed 3.4 million MWh of wind and solar in 2024 — a 29% year-on-year increase — against a backdrop of aging infrastructure and a nearly fivefold upward revision in five-year load-growth forecasts to 128 gigawatts; advanced reconductoring technology, which replaces wire along existing towers without new permitting, has been modelled to enable four times more capacity by 2035 compared with conventional greenfield buildout alone.

Researchers at Hebei University of Technology, Nankai University, and the Oil & Gas Technology Research Institute of Huabei Oilfield Company have produced a millimeter-scale cobalt/graphene carbon bead catalyst — designated CoNC@cPAN/rGO-800 — that achieves complete SMX removal in 20 minutes via peroxymonosulfate activation, while keeping cobalt leaching well below China's industrial wastewater discharge standard, in sharp contrast to conventional powdered cobalt catalysts that leach more than 30 times as much metal. The beads are fabricated by combining the cobalt-based metal-organic framework precursor ZIF-67 with polyacrylonitrile and graphene oxide, then calcining the mixture into a porous carbon structure that locks cobalt species in place; the graphene oxide is simultaneously reduced to rGO, lowering electronic impedance and dispersing cobalt through the carbon framework more evenly. Catalytic activity proceeds in two distinct phases: cobalt metal near the outer shell activates PMS early, while oxygen vacancies in cobalt oxide toward the core subsequently convert dissolved oxygen to superoxide radicals, accelerating the later stage of degradation. The material retained 82.4% efficiency across eight reuse cycles, performed effectively across pH 2–11 and in real river and lake water samples, and is magnetically recoverable; toxicity modeling indicated most breakdown products are less hazardous than sulfamethoxazole itself. Separately, cobalt blue as a color has emerged in autumn fashion as a dominant outerwear trend, with retailers across luxury and high-street segments releasing cobalt-blue jacket styles following runway appearances.

China's lithium carbonate market remains the dominant price signal this week. A data revision by SMM, which nearly doubled its reported stockpile figure to 175,000 tonnes, triggered a sharp sell-off, and battery-grade lithium carbonate has since settled into a 140,000–145,750 yuan-per-tonne range as seasonal purchasing from battery and cathode producers meets recovering domestic supply and higher imports. Mysteel's survey of major battery producers projects September lithium-ion cell output at a year-to-date high of roughly 332 GWh, with LFP cathode demand — representing more than 80% of China's lithium carbonate consumption — described as resilient but strictly price-sensitive below approximately 150,000 yuan per tonne. The broader price slide has continued to weigh on equities: European Lithium's stock shed 8.9% over the week, though on a year-to-date basis it retains a 130% gain driven by its merger narrative, even as Chinese carbonate futures fell 4.99% to 134,800 yuan per tonne late last week.

Corporate activity is substantial. European Lithium's Critical Metals Corp merger review is scheduled for an Australian court on September 15, a hearing that determines whether shareholder meetings in October and a targeted early-November close can proceed; Austria's government has separately extended the Wolfsberg project mining licence by two years, with an extraction decision due by end-2026. JPMorgan has turned bullish on Lithium Americas with a price target implying nearly 100% upside. POSCO Group is committing KRW 29.1 trillion across steel, lithium, and energy over three years under its "Triple Core" strategy, and its Argentina lithium project turned profitable this year after years of capital injections; the group has also secured an equity stake in Mineral Resources' lithium mine and operates a lithium hydroxide plant in partnership with Pilbara Minerals. Whiterock Lithium Corp. has applied to quote 35,000 new CDIs on ASX following warrant conversions at CAD$1.35 per security, bringing total quoted CDIs to 48,234,034.

In exploration, Atana Elements — spun out of Lilac Solutions with a US$27.5 million seed round — is applying oil-and-gas subsurface methods to lithium-brine work, having already advanced the Salar de Jama discovery in Argentina from greenfield to a globally significant NI 43-101-compliant resource in under three years; the project has since been acquired and feasibility engineering is under way. Atana's proprietary downhole tools, computational fluid dynamics models, and AI-assisted data processing — drawing on sources including Soviet-era reports from the 1950s — are now being deployed across broader South American and European targets.

Security conditions in Pakistan's Balochistan province have deteriorated further. The Baloch Liberation Army claimed it seized and burned a lithium exploration site in Mashkel, destroying four drilling machines and five vehicles, and warned all local and international companies that lithium extraction and exploration activities will be treated as targets under an explicit "economic blockade" strategy. The same statement claimed an IED and direct-fire attack on a Pakistani military convoy in Lasbela; Pakistani authorities confirmed four security personnel were killed.

On maritime safety, the World Shipping Council has submitted a proposal to the IMO to close a regulatory gap under Special Provision 188 of the IMDG Code, which currently allows containers holding the energy equivalent of three to four electric vehicles' worth of lithium batteries — approximately 416 kWh in a single laptop-loaded container — to travel without dangerous-goods declaration or placarding; the IMO's Sub-Committee on Carriage of Cargoes and Containers is meeting in London from September 14–18 to consider the matter, with exempt small batteries shipped in bulk identified as a persistent fire risk. In Nigeria, the Aare Musulumi of Oyo land has urged President Tinubu to prioritise lithium investment, citing abundant domestic deposits in Oyo State and other regions and calling for the redirection of fuel-subsidy savings into battery production to support electric public transport.

Kazakhstan occupies a singular position in the emerging global AI alignment contest as the only country to have joined both rival frameworks — the US-led Pax Silica initiative and China's World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO). Pax Silica, launched in December 2025, is structured around securing supply chains for critical minerals, semiconductors, energy, data centers, and computing infrastructure underpinning the AI economy, and currently counts 25 signatories including the European Union, Japan, and Singapore. Kazakhstan signed Pax Silica on June 25, becoming the first Central Asian country to join, while WAICO was established in Shanghai on July 16 with 29 member states including Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Brazil. Washington has signaled through a draft State Department letter that countries participating in China's rival framework risk exclusion from the US coalition, with the document characterizing Pax Silica membership as a binding commitment rather than a nominal affiliation. China's embassy in Washington has rejected that framing, calling on the United States to stop pressuring countries to choose and to refrain from politicizing trade and technology issues. Kazakhstan's government maintains that dual participation aligns with its longstanding multivector foreign policy, with President Toqaev stating that the country's engagement with WAICO reflects support for an open international AI coordination system, while its vast critical mineral reserves make it a strategically significant partner for the Pax Silica supply-chain architecture.

At the BRICS summit, Prime Minister Modi warned against weaponising minerals with China's Premier Li Qiang present, framing the remarks around Beijing's control of more than 90% of global rare-earth magnet processing capacity and India's active development of supply alternatives through partnerships with Brazil and African nations. The concentration of that processing dominance is underscored by IEA data showing China accounted for approximately 91% of refined rare-earth output and 94% of sintered NdFeB magnet production in 2024, with Chinese installed NdFeB capacity estimated at roughly 380,000 tonnes in 2025 and trending toward 450,000 tonnes by 2027. The analysis notes that concentration deepens toward finished magnets as material moves from mine to product, meaning new non-Chinese mining projects still depend on overseas separation, refining, alloying, and magnet manufacturing, across four linked stages identified by the U.S. Department of Energy. Demand for NdFeB magnets continues to broaden beyond electric vehicles into direct-drive wind turbines, robotics, data-center cooling, aerospace, and defense systems.

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