Five items this week. China controls 48 per cent of antimony mine production and imposed export controls in 2024, adding another material to the list of critical minerals where supply concentration has become a policy tool. Zimbabwe brought its lithium export ban forward by a full year, triggering an immediate price response from cathode manufacturers. Amazon launched its Leo satellite internet service in the EU, ending Starlink’s period as the only well-capitalised LEO option for European rural markets. A Sweco report finds that 20 per cent of treated water is lost before it reaches a tap across much of Europe, a physical infrastructure deficit measured in decades of capital expenditure. And governments at the March 2026 Nuclear Energy Summit formally declared an intention to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050.
- China controlled approximately 48 per cent of global antimony mine production and 60 per cent of refined output in 2024, according to USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, and imposed export controls on antimony that took full effect in September 2024.
Antimony is used in flame retardants, ammunition primers, semiconductor dopants, and increasingly in antimony-based sodium-ion batteries and grid storage applications. Global mine production reached approximately 80,000 tonnes in 2024. Following China’s export controls, antimony prices more than doubled in twelve months. The USGS identifies antimony as critical to US national security, noting that the US imports essentially all its antimony with China as the primary supplier. No significant new mine supply can be developed in less than five to ten years, and the export control regime mirrors the pattern already applied to gallium, germanium, and graphite.
Why it matters: China has imposed export controls on gallium, germanium, graphite, and now antimony within a three-year period. Each follows the same pattern: concentrated processing, strategic materials designation in Western policy, and a supply response measured in years. Antimony’s growing role in sodium-ion batteries adds a new demand vector to a supply picture already under restriction. The price signal is already in the data for anyone buying into energy storage or defence-adjacent supply chains.
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Antimony – US Geological Survey
- Zimbabwe accelerated its ban on unprocessed lithium exports to February 2026, moving the deadline forward a full year from the originally planned 2027 cut-off.
Battery-grade lithium carbonate prices in Northeast Asia responded immediately, nearly doubling from their October 2025 lows to around USD 26,000 per tonne by early 2026, as cathode manufacturers and battery producers raced to secure upstream concentrate. Zimbabwe holds some of the world’s largest untapped lithium deposits, and the policy shift follows a pattern now visible across multiple resource-rich nations: governments are choosing to capture processing value domestically rather than export raw material at a fraction of its refined price. Global lithium mine production reached approximately 240,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent in 2024, with Chile, Australia, and China as the three largest producers.
Why it matters: Lithium is not a rare earth, but the same upstream-concentration dynamic applies. The resource is geographically bounded, producer-country policy can reset global prices faster than new mines can be built, and the electrification thesis only adds to the demand side of that equation over the next decade.
Source: USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Lithium – US Geological Survey
- Amazon launched its Leo satellite internet service in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany in early 2026, giving European rural households a funded alternative to Starlink for the first time.
The service, operating under the Project Kuiper infrastructure, drew on Amazon’s existing cloud and logistics capacity and targeted the same underserved rural markets where Starlink has operated without competitive pressure since its EU rollout. Pricing has not yet reached the levels needed to materially undercut Starlink on monthly subscription, but Amazon’s capital base and manufacturing scale make sustained price pressure on the category a near-certainty over the next 12 to 18 months. The arrival of a second well-capitalised LEO operator removes Starlink’s ability to price as a de facto monopoly in European markets where fibre remains unavailable.
Why it matters: A two-supplier LEO market changes the calculus for anyone weighing a terminal purchase. The hardware investment now buys access to a competitive service layer rather than a single-provider dependency. Our comparison of Starlink Mini and Standard Roam plans, Starlink Mini vs Standard Roam: which configuration for EU buyers, holds up better in a world where subscription pricing is under downward pressure.
Source: Amazon: Project Kuiper Broadband Service – Amazon
- Engineering consultancy Sweco published a 2026 report finding that around 20 per cent of treated water is lost to pipe leakage across much of Europe before it reaches a tap.
The report, titled “Too Much, Too Little, Too Polluted,” also found that flooding in 2024 caused EUR 18 billion in damages to infrastructure and property across the continent, and that 20 per cent of EU land experiences water stress during at least one season each year. Around 32 per cent of European groundwater bodies face diffuse pollution pressure, mainly from agricultural runoff, compounding the access problem. The infrastructure in question was largely designed for different climate conditions and lower treatment demands than currently exist.
Why it matters: Public water systems face simultaneous pressure from under-investment, increasing demand, and a climate that is moving in the wrong direction for grid-dependent supply. The gap between where infrastructure is and where it needs to be is measurable in decades of capital expenditure. Household-level water independence, through storage, filtration, and catchment, is not a category that looks overpriced in that context.
Source: Sweco: Too Much, Too Little, Too Polluted (2026) – Sweco Group
- Governments at the March 2026 Nuclear Energy Summit formally declared an intention to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, while the underlying uranium supply gap continues to widen.
The summit, organised by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, represented the most coordinated political endorsement of nuclear power in at least two decades. Uranium spot prices reached USD 101 per pound in January 2026, the highest in two years, before settling around USD 84 per pound by mid-March as unexpected Uzbek supply came to market. The structural picture is not softened by that correction: 2025 global production ran at approximately 173 million pounds against demand of roughly 204 million pounds, and utilities have not contracted uranium at replacement rates since 2012, meaning the forward supply gap is accumulating with each passing year.
Why it matters: A tripling declaration converts a political trend into a formal government commitment. Enrichment capacity is being rebuilt from scratch in North America and Western Europe. New mines take a decade or more to bring on line. The timeline for closing the supply gap is measured in decades, not years, and the declaration adds committed demand at the top of that curve.
Source: IEA: Nuclear Power and Secure Energy Transitions – IEA; World Nuclear Association: Reactor Data – World Nuclear Association