Nth Cycle will go public via a merger with SPAC Kensington Capital Acquisition Corp. VI (NYSE: KCAC), valuing the critical minerals refiner at $585 million and targeting up to $330 million in gross proceeds from Kensington’s trust and a common stock PIPE. The combined entity, Nth Cycle Holdings, Inc., will trade on the NYSE under ticker “NTH” and scale its modular ‘Oyster’ electro-extraction units, which selectively recover nickel, cobalt, rare earths, copper and other battery metals from scrap, end-of-life batteries and mined rock. A previously signed 10-year, approximately $1.1 billion offtake agreement with Trafigura underpins commercial deployment.

ICMM’s new global dataset of 12,000 mining and metals facilities across 148 countries shows 65.7% operate in areas with significant physical water risk, with 38.2% in catchments of high baseline water stress, 27% exposed to high drought risk and 14% to high flood risk. Exposure is highly uneven, with 85.8% of Chilean facilities in high-stress catchments and similarly elevated levels in Africa and the Middle East. ICMM warns that poorly understood water risk could constrain water-intensive processes such as crushing, flotation, leaching and tailings management, tightening supply for the energy transition.

Gold and silver prices jumped as the US–Iran conflict spread to a second key maritime chokepoint, pushing investors into safe-haven metals despite the highest long-term US borrowing costs in years. Traders moved back into bullion even as 10-year US Treasury yields remain near multi-year highs, a backdrop that typically pressures non-yielding assets. The shift signals that geopolitical risk premia are currently outweighing interest-rate headwinds in precious metals markets, with knock-on implications for mine hedging strategies and project financing assumptions.