Russian billionaire Vladimir Iorich has created a $150 million fund to buy battery metals with a focus on lithium-ion batteries used for electric vehicles and other consumer electronic devices like mobile phones.
The investment company is called Pana New Energy Metals. Pala invests in development and production stage companies, as well as products and services that serve the mining sector. The company previously bought into Cobalt which has surged since 2016 from roughly USD 25,000 to 60,000 per ton. Cobalt is a common material in lithium-ion batteries. Bloomberg reports Pala is also investing in lithium, vanadium, rare earth metals, nickel, and tin.
Pala purports that there is a shift in the industrial economy which is both “pervasive and long-lived” — a gateway to the battery and the new energy space. They believe global raw material supply is not sufficient to meet the demands over the next decade due to the rise of electric vehicles, grid storage, renewables, and other technology.
Stephen Gill, Managing Partner of Pala says:
“We believe these industrial shifts will result in changing supply and demand dynamics across a range of raw materials, which will provide for attractive investment opportunities going forward.”
In June, Pala exchanged 626 tons of cobalt for shares in Canadian mining company Cobalt 27 worth some CAD 200 million. Cobalt 27 is a company building an asset base underpinned by physical cobalt material. Another recent investment is in Altura Mining Limited, which is developing the Pilangoora lithium mine in Australia.
Pilangoora is a hard-rock open put lithium mine which will comment product in late (Q3) 2017. They estimate an approximate 215,000 tonnes of lithium spodumene concentrate per annum with a life of mine (LOM) of 14 years.
