Nova Andino Litio SpA, the new joint venture between Codelco and SQM to develop lithium production in Chile’s Atacama Salt Flat, has held its first board meeting, signalling a shift from negotiation to implementation. The board comprises Codelco representatives Máximo Pacheco M, Josefina Montenegro A and Alfredo Moreno Ch, alongside SQM’s Ricardo Ramos. For project engineers, this formal governance structure clears the way for detailed planning of brine extraction, evaporation pond layouts and processing capacity expansions in one of the world’s highest-grade lithium salars.

Silver plunged nearly 10% from a record $83.63/oz to the low $70s on Monday, its steepest intraday fall since 2021, after a month-long 40% surge driven by Chinese investment demand and Shanghai spot premiums exceeding $8/oz over London. Despite the pullback, silver is still up 148% in 2025 and briefly reached a market capitalisation above Nvidia’s $4.55 trillion, with its 14-day RSI easing to about 67 after three weeks above the overbought 70 threshold. Gold also retreated more than 4.5% from a record $4,543.51/oz, though it remains up nearly 75% year to date.

Axis International has launched a $28.9 billion arbitration claim at the World Bank’s ICSID after Guinea revoked the Boffa bauxite mining permit, one of more than 50 licences cancelled in May under President Mamadi Doumbouya’s crackdown on non-compliant projects. Axis says its Axis Minerals Resources unit, 85%-owned by Axis with the state holding 15%, exported 18 million tonnes of bauxite in 2024 from Boffa and was targeting 48 million tonnes in 2025, backed by over 800 million tonnes of proven reserves. The government has also seized equipment, frozen bank accounts and cancelled other operators’ permits, including Nomad Bauxite Corporation and a subsidiary of Emirates Global Aluminium, signalling heightened sovereign and licence security risk in Guinea’s bauxite and iron ore sectors.