The Saturday Letter
Dear desk,
Congo's biggest open question is closer to an answer. The US-backed consortium Orion CMC says its purchase of 40% of Glencore's majority interests in its major Democratic Republic of Congo operations is now in final phases, nine months after the preliminary deal was struck in February. No closing date yet, but a transaction of this size, cutting into Glencore's grip on Congolese copper and cobalt, is the sort of thing that moves counterparty lists on the Copperbelt long before it moves a share price.
Argentina wants a piece of the copper build-out everyone keeps routing through Chile. First Quantum is lining up tax breaks for its $5.3 billion Taca Taca project, which the company says could produce around 209,000 tonnes of copper a year over a 35-year mine life. Separately, Newmont has put a price on its British Columbia expansion: up to $4.8 billion at Red Chris, targeting 65,000 to 85,000 tonnes of copper and 275,000 to 325,000 ounces of gold a year once it's running, from 2035. Neither tonne ships before the next decade, but both numbers are now on the board for anyone modelling where copper supply actually comes from once the Chilean story stops being the whole story.
Freight gave back some of its week. The Baltic Dry snapped a four-day climb, even as China's iron ore imports keep running ahead of last year's pace. Today's print holds the index at 2,660 points, flat on the session, so call it a pause rather than a turn, but it's worth watching against grain loadings into November.
Washington put money behind the fertilizer line this week. The Trump administration announced $8 billion in fuel aid for farmers during harvest, and on 22 October followed with more than $1.34 billion earmarked to expand domestic fertilizer capacity. It lands the same week urea climbed 2.4% to 453 USD/t on the day's print, a reminder that US policy support and a firming global price can move in the same direction at once. Nepal, meanwhile, has opened its own door, inviting proposals for a green urea plant, a small story now but a data point on where the next wave of nitrogen capacity gets built.
Kinshasa's tax collector closed two of the capital's flagship hotels. The Direction générale des impôts sealed the Pullman Grand Hôtel and the Fleuve Congo Hôtel as part of a crackdown on standardised invoicing compliance. Both properties sit on the river, both are fixtures for anyone doing business in the capital, and both are now shut until the paperwork clears.
P.S. The US Department of Energy has added helium to its critical materials list, citing demand outpacing production. Bannerman has given the final go-ahead on its $353 million Etango uranium mine in Namibia. DRC's Treasury raised $23 million in its latest public debt auction. And diesel and gasoline both eased on the day, down 2.7% and 2.0% respectively, even as a separate piece out this week flagged rising fuel bills as the thing actually testing African copper and iron ore margins right now.