Just when you think you've got 'em on the zirconium ropes....
That's pretty much the history of commodities, and why "they're for tradin', not 'vestin'" as the old-time speculators used to say.*
From the South China Morning Post, July 27:
Chinese geologists discover massive supply of the rare metal mineral embedded in sandstone along ancient river and lake systems
In a discovery that could reshape the global balance of strategic mineral supply, Chinese geologists have uncovered a huge zirconium deposit in the Kubai Basin, on the northern fringe of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang – a deadly stretch of arid land that may now become a new driver of China’s hi-tech military ambitions.
The newly identified deposit, embedded within Cenozoic continental sedimentary layers dating to the Paleogene and Neogene periods, represents the first super-large zirconium resource ever discovered in a terrestrial, non-marine basin in China.
Unlike traditional zirconium sources – typically found along coastlines or within hard-rock igneous systems – this deposit formed through ancient river and lake systems that transported zircon grains over hundreds of kilometres from alkaline rock sources in the region, depositing them in deltaic and lacustrine environments.
The ore, hosted in loose to semi-consolidated gravelly medium-coarse sandstones, contains an estimated 2 million tonnes of zirconium dioxide, according to preliminary assessments.
It is four times the total reserve of China at present.
Zirconium alloys, prized for their exceptional resistance to heat, corrosion and neutron absorption, are fundamental in manufacturing scramjet combustion chambers, thermal protection tiles, nose cones and guidance components.
As the United States, Russia and China race to deploy operational hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles, control over zirconium supply chains has quietly become as critical as access to rare earth elements.
For decades, the search for zirconium has been bound by geological orthodoxy: zircon sands were believed to originate only from the weathering and wave-driven concentration of primary rocks along shorelines.
Mines from Australia to India have capitalised on these coastal placers, forming the backbone of global supply. Despite China being the world’s largest consumer of zirconium – using over 53 per cent of global output in ceramics, nuclear reactors and advanced aerospace applications – it has long been at the mercy of foreign markets.
With domestic reserves previously pegged at a mere 500,000 tonnes – less than 1 per cent of world’s total – and over 90 per cent of supply imported, zirconium has been a glaring strategic vulnerability.
“Zirconium is one of the most critically scarce strategic and essential rare metal minerals in China,” wrote the project team led by Liu Bing, senior engineer with Xinjiang’s Geological Bureau, in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese journal Earth Science in June.
“As zirconium has been classified as a critical strategic resource by multiple countries, issues surrounding resource security are becoming increasingly prominent and the imbalance between supply and demand is growing ever more severe.
“The discovery of this deposit not only significantly increases China’s zirconium resource reserves, but also promises to transform the nation’s supply landscape for zirconium,” added Liu and his colleagues.
The Kubai find not only quintuples China’s known zircon resources but also shatters long-standing geological paradigms. The discovery shows that zirconium can accumulate in vast quantities far from the sea, within stable continental basins, through fluvial and lacustrine processes previously dismissed as impossible.
This means that geologists are no longer confined to the coastline. It opens up entire continental interiors – previously ignored – as viable hunting grounds.
The deposit’s average grade exceeds 0.2 per cent zircon, with high concentrations of zircon and associated titanium minerals. The ore is amenable to opencast mining, low in energy-intensive processing requirements and located near existing rail and highway infrastructure, according to the study.....
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is still (just) a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by...
The darn things are mean reverting. It's not rocket surgery.
See, for example:
Société Générale's Dylan Grice-"Commodities: ‘Their Expected Long-Run Real Return is 0%’"
Commodities: "The Case for Human Ingenuity"
Commodity Prices Tend to be Mean-Reverting (cotton)
