"Prices are up over 230% year to date, really around a lack of available material," said Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Agro-mining is the process of growing plants that absorb metal through soil, a mechanism to clean poisoned lands and maybe gather battery components like nickel and cobalt.

With a market capitalization of nearly $249 billion, the Tesla supplier narrowly surpassed Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.

Prices of metals such as tin, aluminum, copper, nickel and cobalt have risen between 20% and 91% this year.

The length of copper’s bull market will depend on the pace of the clean energy transition, the company says.

The project would eventually produce as much as 50,000 tonnes of nickel cathodes a year, as well as smaller amounts of copper and cobalt.