Titan Mining’s Empire State Mines has agreed a term sheet with the US Army to lease about 97 acres at Anniston Army Depot, Alabama, for up to 100 years to build a commercial-scale graphite processing plant producing Purified Micronised Graphite (phase I) and, after customer qualification, Coated Spherical Purified Graphite. The facility will sit inside an existing defence installation, using established access, utilities and infrastructure to fast-track construction and integrate with Titan’s Kilbourne graphite concentrate operation in New York. The Army secures a right of first offer for up to 10% of uncommitted annual PMG and CSPG output, without direct taxpayer funding exposure.

Dutch central bank De Nederlandsche Bank has shifted 86 tonnes of gold from New York and Ottawa to London between March and August 2026, raising London’s share of its 612.4-tonne reserve from 18.1% to 32.1% while New York and Ottawa each drop to 18.5% and Zeist stays at 30.8%. The move combined selling 59 tonnes in New York and repurchasing in London with physically transporting 27 tonnes under armoured, GPS-tracked security to Zeist, then swapping equivalent London-good-delivery bars to the Bank of England’s vaults. This reallocation prioritises immediate tradability in crisis scenarios and mirrors similar recent relocations by the Banque de France.

Canada’s mining sector has secured rare cross-government backing, with outgoing Mining Association of Canada CEO Pierre Gratton urging companies to convert faster federal-provincial impact assessments and Ottawa’s proposed Productivity Mega Deduction—allowing full expensing of eligible mine development capital on entry into service—into built projects. He pointed to a 23% fall in Canadian copper output and 44% drop in nickel over the past decade, contrasted with a 31% rise in gold production and Eldorado Gold’s McIlvenna Bay, described as the first new Canadian copper-zinc mine in more than a decade. Gratton warned that developers still risk losing political support if they mishandle Indigenous relationships, and pressed for “one project, one review” and exclusions for expansions and fully electric underground mines from federal impact assessment triggers.