Canada’s first diamond mine, Ekati, 300 km northeast of Yellowknife, will shut after the Supreme Court of British Columbia placed owner Arctic Canadian Diamond Company, a Burgundy Diamond Mines subsidiary, into receivership despite a C$115 million federal loan in December 2025. The Northwest Territories government has applied to appoint PricewaterhouseCoopers as Receiver and will advance funds using the mine’s reclamation security to manage closure, site stability and environmental protection. Ekati’s closure follows Rio Tinto’s Diavik shutdown in March, leaving Gahcho Kué as Canada’s last diamond mine, currently expected to cease production by 2028.

Copper supply risks have “worsened considerably”, with the IEA warning that sulphuric acid shortages now threaten more than 15% of global primary output produced via SxEW, after the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut roughly half of global seaborne sulphur trade and China banned acid exports through year-end. The DRC and Chile are most exposed, with about 1.5 Mt and 1.2 Mt of leached production and some sites down to 30–60 days of sulphur/acid inventory, while 2025 disruptions already removed 1.5 Mt of mined supply and pushed prices above $14,000/t. Despite project additions in the DRC, Zambia, Peru, Russia and Canada, the IEA still sees primary supply around 25% short of 2035 requirements, with ore grades down 40% since 1991 and copper needing roughly $310 billion of the $750+ billion mining and refining investment required to 2040.

Hitachi Construction Machinery and Pronto have signed an MoU to develop open, OEM-agnostic mine automation solutions built around Pronto’s tiered Autonomous Haulage Systems, which retrofit to existing haul trucks from any manufacturer. Pronto’s AHS has already hauled millions of tonnes in mixed-fleet commercial operations across three continents, while Hitachi contributes a large global installed base of mining equipment and long-running autonomy R&D. The partnership targets miners seeking fleet-agnostic automation that can be flexibly deployed from regional quarries to deep-pit mines without locking into a single vendor platform.