Caterpillar has acquired spatial data specialist Skycatch, adding drone-based 3D mapping and high-resolution terrain modelling to its mining technology stack for material movement optimisation. The deal, which follows Caterpillar’s purchase of RPMGlobal, extends digital capabilities from mine planning software into real-time site visualisation and volumetric analysis. For geotechs and mine planners, tighter integration of point-cloud data with fleet management should sharpen blast design, bench stability monitoring and short-interval control without adding survey cycle time.

Yen shorts have reached roughly 138,000 net futures and options contracts, the most bearish positioning since 2007, with USD/JPY near ¥162 and Japan already spending a record ¥11.73 trillion ($72.7 billion) on intervention as gold trades around $4,126/oz versus about $2,400 during the 2024 unwind. In August 2024, a BOJ move plus a weak US jobs print forced rapid deleveraging: gold dropped over $100 intraday before rebounding, silver and copper sold off harder, and mining equities were hit by both equity and metal liquidation. With Japanese 10-year JGB yields now near 2.85% and a larger yen short outstanding, a similar BOJ–US payrolls pairing around the 30–31 July meeting could again trigger short, violent pressure on monetary and industrial metals, with gold likely sold first for liquidity.

China’s structurally closed midstream processing dominance in gallium, graphite, rare earths, lithium and tungsten is described as effectively impossible to dislodge, prompting Nicholas Vafeas to propose a “Critical Dominance Opportunity Index” (CDOI) to measure where new entrants can still gain leverage. Base metals such as copper, nickel and chromium remain contestable, whereas tungsten shows how China is now moving to monopolise circularity frameworks and secondary processing of tungsten waste streams. The argument is that Western €10 billion-scale investments must shift from “catch-up” refining in closed markets to contestable midstream and recycling niches where strategic control is still achievable.