Potential ESG driver for Chile due to its iodine endowment. This is a post from ETI / EVLLF board which discusses a non-cyanide mining solution. Chile caught my eye because of they have the iodine plus the minerals along with the unpleasant political situation, more so than Peru which has also been experiencing one blockade after another.
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Confluence of events in Chile may be a pleasant surprise.
ESG trends are clearly in ETI’s favor, like the move away from cyanide and recent news of the world’s largest cyanide manufacturer going offline (article stated neighboring Peru is among the most affected users). That backdrop is already supportive of ETI’s endeavors on the mining side.
Now think about supply chains. ETI’s technology requires Iodine, among other things, but apparently much iodine. Who are the world’s largest producers of elemental iodine? Chile is the #1 supplier and Japan is #2.
This gets interesting when you have a (former?) top mining country like Chile mandate ESG in their proposed new constitution while they increase the threat of nationalization, among other things. The political winds are worrying to the mining industry while at the same time a potential windfall for ETI because the company is all about ESG. Theoretically a good solution for the direction Chile and others want to take. ETI may transform mining operations at any scale in Chile while allowing nascent operations to move into production because they avoid cyanide.
Japan has the largest elemental iodine reserves but Chile is by far the largest producer. (ref. U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries, January 2021).
https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-iodine.pdf Who moves first in Chile to de-risk or shield themselves in some way by adopting ETI’s non-cyanide formula? Governments also tend to be supportive of in-country solutions, so using Chile’s iodine in country would be totally in line with ESG transformation of its bread & butter industry, mining.