Carmakers urged to invest in mines to avoid battery metal pinch

Also approves expansion of Tanami mine in Australia.

"The major producers are adding incremental volume at around $20 a tonne, that gives you a sense of where the vulnerability is."

The number of registered artisanal miners, or barrequeros, inside Colombia now top 100,000 and production should keep rising.

But authorities and miners say calls for a global moratorium on coal mines ignore the scale of global demand for energy.

Chinese scrap – typically around 90% Fe – has fallen to below 62% iron ore at its 2011 peak and below domestic pig iron prices.

The NSW Department of Planning has recommended conditional approval of the much needed and long-debated mine expansion, as its current permit expires in June 2017.

Rick has seen too many cycles to answer a question like that.

Vale's scorched earth strategy pays off: production on its way to 450 million tonnes at an astonishing cost of just $12.70 a tonne.

The rough-diamond miner extracted about 11.6 million carats in Q3, or 20% more than in the same period last year. However, it could only sell 4.9 million carats.