Invest in raw materials for coming electric age – resources researcher

I learnt just the other night from a geologist family friend that most of the world's very finite lithium deposits lie in the salt pans of Bolivia – and that he's spent years prospecting for rock-based lithium deposits just north of Upington while employed by a major parastatal. It's pretty obvious with the inexorable electric car revolution that within a decade or so, extracting any local lithium deposits may become hugely financially viable, even though there's a built-in environmental paradox in how it would be extracted. Cyanide is apparently the extraction chemical of choice when it comes to rock deposits. So, on the one hand we mitigate pollution by slowly converting to electric cars and on the other… I guess that's why they're sticking to the more extraction-friendly salt pans right now. Hopefully the environmental equation in South Africa won't leave us between a rock and a hard place. Biznews founder Alec Hogg interviews a South African-born global expert on natural resources, Gavin Montgomery, who provides some fascinating insights about the knock-on effects of the incipient transport industry transformation. – Chris Bateman

The electrification of transport is already fundamentally altering the metals and mining sector where forward-thinking miners have about six years to plan, dig and extract what will become hugely-sought after minerals, initially lithium, but later cobalt and nickel.

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