IIR Tracks $120 Billion in Likely North America Metals & Minerals Projects for 2025

Because it includes battery and conductivity items like lithium and cobalt, as well as stalwart investments like gold and copper, the Metals & Minerals Industry is increasingly affected by energy transition trends across the world, including the U.S. and Canada. Ironically, in spite of worldwide growth in transition interest and investment--or maybe because of that--metals and minerals prices are a mixed bag for 2025, said Industrial Info's Joe Govreau at the recent Baton Rouge 2025 Outlook event. The company is tracking about $120 billion in likely new activity in North America for next year.

"You have things like gold, which is at over $2,700 an ounce, up by about $1,000 per ounce from a year ago, said Govreau, Industrial Info's vice president of research for Metals & Minerals. "Then on the other hand you have other commodities going down, like lithium, nickel and cobalt, all the battery metals."

A slowdown in the Chinese economy--a major adopter of electric vehicles (EVs)--along with rising production capacities have created a supply glut, at least for the near term.

Indeed, said Govreau, "A lot of the project activity we're seeing is around the energy transition and decarbonization of the industry."

However, the Metals & Minerals Industry itself is responsible for 15-20% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mainly from mining itself, along with steel and cement manufacturing. These are major focal points for green initiatives.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is another factor deciding how much money end-users have to spend on EVs and other items. Govreau noted that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees worldwide growth at a moderate 3.2% for 2025, similar to this year's figures. In the U.S., the GDP is forecasted to drop from the 2.8% of 2024 to about 2% in 2025.

Medium- and high-probability projects for next year in the U.S. and Canada total $120 billion. This is in addition to $90 billion in projects already underway, Govreau said.

Sixty percent of those projects are in the U.S., mainly the Great Lakes region. Most of Canada's expected activity will be in the western provinces. Mining accounts for about half of that.

Some of the most active sectors include gold mining (about $20 billion), steel manufacturing ($15 billion), potash mining (less than $15 billion), and oil sand mining (Canada, about $12 billion). Lithium, the superstar of the energy transition for its use in batteries, lands sixth with about $9 billion in mining projects planned for 2025.

Lithium supplies have outstripped demand, at least temporarily, in part because of a 21% increase in lithium projects year-over year. But hope for the future has caused the sector's value to rise by 42% in the same time frame, reflecting optimism as battery and storage demand continues to grow.

For hard-to-decarbonize products like cement and steel, there is much focus on greening in every way that is possible.

"It's mainly the cement manufacturers that are looking at carbon capture and storage," Govreau said. "They're taking the off-gas from the reheater tower and looking at ways to store that underground, or to make other products out of it."

The steel sector is also looking at converting from natural gas to, eventually, green hydrogen for its furnaces.

"We do see a lot of projects there," Govreau said. The Power-to-X mainly is using renewable energy to make hydrogen."

Industrial Info's extensive research into equipment service providers in the construction market show that they are very busy, Govreau said, adding, "The U.S. and Canada construction projects go from $55 billion in the beginning of 2023 to now we're at $90 billion. That's an incredible jump...."

In fact, he noted, construction projects have grown steadily since 2017 except for the hiccup during the COVID pandemic.

On the mining side, the top eight global mining majors (Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) (London, England), BHP Group Limited (Melbourne, Australia), Newmont Corporation (NYSE:NEM) (Denver, Colorado), Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:GOLD) (Toronto, Ontario), Vale SA (NYSE:VALE) (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Anglo American plc (London), Freeport-McMoRan Incorporated (NYSE:FCX) (Phoenix, Arizona) and Glencore plc (Baar, Switzerland)) are also spending more on construction, "about twice as much as they did at the bottom of the market in 2017, and that's expected to continue into the next year," Govreau noted. However, 2025's growth will plateau based on what these eight mining companies are planning.

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