Week in Review: Lithium Sources, Prices Rise and a Rare Earths Discovery

Before we head into the weekend, let’s take a look back at the week that was with some of the stories here on MetalMiner:

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• When the next economic crisis hits, what will be the cause? MetalMiner’s Stuart Burns looked at one possibility.
• Europe’s dependence on imports of lithium is leading to one investment partnership that will seek to find and develop sources of the metal in Europe.
• Copper prices bounced back up last month, Irene Martinez Canorea wrote in her Copper Monthly Metals Index (MMI) report.
• In other news, a discovery of a deposit of rare-earth oxides under Japanese waters could be a big deal … one day.
• The LME aluminum price soared last month, hitting a more than seven-year high.
• It was a down month for many of the metals tracked in our Renewables MMI basket.
• LME nickel prices also rose last month, albeit at a slower rate than in 2017, Martinez Canorea explains.
• U.S. imports of grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) dropped considerably last month, from over 3,000 tons in March to less than 1,000 in April, MetalMiner Executive Editor Lisa Reisman explained.

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