Lisa Reisman

With the Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo being a rich source of the so-called Three Ts – Tantalum, Tin and Tungsten – and these minerals having been used to finance the civil war in the region, “conflict minerals” are a hot-button issue. The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law and respective rules handed down by the SEC in 2012 meant to address the issue of U.S. companies sourcing materials from the conflict region, but the associated disclosure requirements have created much confusion among companies using these metals – at all levels of the supply chain.

Our friends at MetalMiner – also the authors of a white paper on building responsible manufacturing supply chains in the context of conflict minerals — held an event on May 6 in Chicago aimed at clearing up much of the confusion, which was another reason we thought May would be a good month to feature the “Three T’s” on our blog.

Post conference coverage is already available at www.agmetalminer.com and and Metal Miner’s partner site www.spendmatters.com, including discussion of Lawrence Heim’s (Director of The Elm Consulting Group International) presentation offering some practical strategies and approaches for conflict minerals compliance.

Friends of American Resources won’t be surprised to hear us suggest one possible alternative to the difficulties of conflict metals compliance: Development of at least tantalum and tungsten deposits in the U.S. would be a terrific way to help manufacturing companies go “conflict-free.”

Our friends at MetalMiner recently went over import and export trends for Tantalum against the backdrop of the August 22, 2012 SEC conflict minerals rule and they enlisted Chris Grove, director of communications at Commerce Resources, a junior Tantalum mining firm, to comment on the numbers.

MetalMiner found that in spite of new rules being in place, the import numbers for Tantalum from China look roughly the same today as they did before the August SEC action, indicating that there is a good chance the Tantalum industry “has found a way around the ruling,” as Grove suggests. The dollar value of Tantalum imports from China even peaked in January of 2013.

Commenting on the apparent stability of import levels, Grove pointed out to MetalMiner that companies don’t actually have to file their conflict mineral disclosures before May 2014. Continues MetalMiner’s post:

“And once tantalum ore moves to an oxide form, it becomes untraceable. The main exporters of oxide have likely stockpiled the processed oxide (ed. note: the tantalum supply chain tends toward stockpiling vs. JIT-type ordering) and have now secured conflict-free raw materials for ongoing operations. In other words, conflict materials have likely already converted to a processed oxide and have made their way to US firms. For the first reporting period, buying organizations will likely declare tantalum oxide ‘source undeterminable,’ whereas by the 2015 reporting period, most of the processed oxides will likely come from conflict-free sources.”

Meanwhile, Grove sees the January dollar value import peak as a sign that “the demand for Tantalum is increasing, which makes perfect sense considering the overall increasing demand for products themselves that need Tantalum for their design and performance,” which is all the more reason why U.S. stakeholders should keep Tantalum on their watch list.

As we have pointed out on numerous occasions, the United States has subjected itself to a significant degree of import dependency when it comes to the supply of critical minerals – a dependency that is in many cases homegrown and unnecessary. This over-reliance on foreign mineral sources comes with many strings attached, particularly when supplier [...]

China has announced a series of moves designed to place additional controls on global rare earth metal supply. Meanwhile, U.S. Federal and state policymakers continue to dither over domestic mining policy initiatives. According to the National Mining Association, the US has $6.2 trillion dollars of mineral reserves, but it also has one of the slowest [...]

In a new piece on her website, MetalMiner co-founder and American Resources expert Lisa Reisman asks if Manganese is the “Twin Brother or Ugly Stepchild of the Rare Earth Metal Family.” Indeed, there are a number of similarities between both metal markets, which Reisman lists as follows: · Both share significant supply constraints, forcing sourcing [...]

If you haven’t had the chance to visit our experts page yet, we’d like for you to meet two of the people who joined the American Resources panel of thought leaders and industry experts from the very start. Gareth Hatch is a founding principal of Technology Metals Research, LLC.  An authority in the area of [...]

ARPN expert Lisa Reisman has a very insightful post on her website “MetalMinerTM” this week. Adding her own commentary, Reisman discusses rare earth and specialty metals lobbyist Jeff Green’s take on the current public policy debate regarding rare earth metals and critical minerals, as well as related legislation in pending in Congress.  Below is an [...]