Field Notes

Where the numbers stop agreeing with the story.

Deep dives on global mineral value chains: macro-strategy, supply–demand risk, with the downside priced before the upside is sold.

Filter 5 field notes

West Africa · Steel

$8bn built. Zero tonnes shipped.

Forty-six years after groundbreaking, Ajaokuta has produced no commercial steel — the base rate every West African build case forgets to price.

SPENT · 0 t OUTPUT

Latin America · Risk

270 dead. 100% of dams 'certified stable.'

Vale's disclosures certified 100% of its dams stable. One, rated 1.09 against a 1.5 benchmark, liquefied without warning — the confusion of documentation with control, priced in lives and market cap.

ERASED IN ONE SESSION

Middle East · Oil

28× the oil that exists. Trade the shape.

Paper barrels trade at roughly 28× the physical market. Positioning on the spot price misreads a market whose real signal lives in the shape of the curve, not the level.

PAPER TO PHYSICAL

SE Asia · Nickel

6% to 60%. Control not included.

Indonesia rebuilt the world's nickel supply in a decade — and broke the price, handed the margin to Chinese capital and coal, and built a machine the West's green rules now exclude. Owning a market is not controlling it.

OF WORLD SUPPLY · FROM <6%

Latin America · Copper

$4.3bn out the door. BHP read the cycle.

BHP sold its silver stream rather than defend it — a capital-allocation tell about a major pre-funding its dividend before a copper-heavy capex peak, a contested Samarco appeal, and a Chinese buyer consolidating its iron-ore book.

SILVER STREAM · SOLD

The Commodity Briefings

The value chain, on film.

Short, sourced explainers on the metals that move the transition — the same discipline as the notes above, in ten minutes on screen.

Iron Ore

The seaborne trade the price forgets.

Copper

The deficit everyone models, nobody supplies.

Aluminium

The most electricity-intensive metal we make.