EXPLORATION spend by the world’s mining sector was nearly $10bn in 2018 as the hunt for metals used in electric vehicle batteries hotted up, said Bloomberg News citing data published by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Budgets jumped about 19%, outpacing last year’s gain, which had been the first for the industry – excluding some commodities such as iron ore and aluminium – since 2012, according to S&P which surveyed more than 3,000 companies in compiling its data.
The value of exploration for cobalt and lithium, used in rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles, jumped 82% in 2018, though spending remains a fraction of the amount deployed on gold or base metals, said Bloomberg News.
The number of companies and entities working on projects in 2018 rebounded to about 1,651 – the first rise in active exploration companies in six years, it said. Despite the increase, exploration spend is about a third less than in 2012. Equity market funding for explorers also remains constrained, the newswire said.
