Origins — North America
Where the contract matters more than the cargo.
The two commodities North America genuinely dominates are potash and uranium, and neither trades on an index. Both are won or lost in an annual negotiation.
- Saskatchewan potash
- Largest basin on earth
- Athabasca uranium grades
- ~100× world average
- Mexico, silver rank
- First
- How it is sold
- Term, not spot
Overview
Term contracts, and two dominant positions.
North America's genuinely dominant positions are two things nobody pictures when they think of mining: potash and uranium. Both are sold on long-term contracts negotiated annually or over several years rather than against a spot index, which means the negotiation is the product and the cargo is almost an afterthought.
Saskatchewan holds the largest potash basin in the world and behaves like an oligopoly, because it is one. Offshore tonnes are marketed collectively and the annual settlements with Chinese and Indian buyers set a reference the entire world prices against. When Belarusian and Russian supply was disrupted, this basin was the swing.
Athabasca uranium runs at grades on the order of a hundred times the world average, high enough that the ore cannot be mined conventionally — the ground is frozen and the ore is jet-bored remotely. It also means individual mines can be shut and restarted as deliberate supply management in a way ordinary operations cannot.
The rest is conventional and large: British Columbian coking coal into Asia, Mesabi taconite into domestic steel, Arizona copper, Mexican silver, and Mountain Pass as the only Western rare earth mine operating at scale.
Minerals desk
Potash, and an annual negotiation that sets a world price.
Muriate of potash at 60 to 62% K₂O, sold as standard or granular depending on whether it is going into blending or direct application. The product is simple; the market structure is not.
Offshore sales from the Canadian producers are marketed collectively, and the annual contract settlements with the large Chinese and Indian importers set a benchmark that prices the residual spot market rather than the other way round. A trader who is not in that conversation is taking whatever it produces.
The 2022 disruption to Belarusian and Russian supply made this basin the marginal source for a large part of the world, and it revealed how little spare capacity exists anywhere else. New capacity here takes the better part of a decade and several billion dollars, which is why the supply response was so slow.
Minerals desk →| Operation | Product | Owner and note |
|---|---|---|
| Rocanville, Allan, Cory, Lanigan | MOP, 60 – 62% K₂O | Nutrien, Saskatchewan — the largest producer group |
| Esterhazy | MOP | Mosaic, Saskatchewan — among the largest single potash operations |
| Belle Plaine | MOP, solution mined | Mosaic, Saskatchewan |
| Jansen | MOP, in construction | BHP, Saskatchewan — the largest greenfield potash project in the world |
| Green River | Trona and soda ash | Wyoming — the world's largest natural soda ash deposit |
Energy desk
Uranium, and the licence you need to own it.
Uranium concentrate leaves the mill as U₃O₈ and then travels a chain nothing else in our book has: conversion to UF₆, enrichment, and fabrication into fuel assemblies. Value at each stage is contracted separately, and a utility buying fuel is buying four services and a commodity.
It is also the only material we handle that a buyer needs regulatory authorisation to possess at all. Transport is under specific packaging regulation, export requires a licence per shipment, and transfers are constrained by non-proliferation agreements between states. Legality is a gating item, not a compliance overlay.
The spot market is small and unrepresentative, and most volume moves on multi-year utility contracts with floors, ceilings and escalators. Producers here have historically managed supply deliberately, buying in the spot market rather than mining into a weak price — behaviour that only works when the reserve grades are this good.
Energy desk →| Operation | Product | Owner and note |
|---|---|---|
| McArthur River and Key Lake | U₃O₈, very high grade | Cameco, Athabasca Basin — among the highest-grade uranium on earth |
| Cigar Lake and McClean Lake | U₃O₈ | Cameco and Orano — jet-bored through frozen ground |
| Wyoming and Nebraska ISR | U₃O₈, in-situ recovery | Lower grade, faster to restart, price-responsive |
| Olympic Dam | Uranium by-product | Australia — the largest deposit in the world, produced as a copper by-product |
Energy desk
Elk Valley coal and Great Lakes iron.
British Columbian coking coal is low volatile with high CSR — a genuine premium product that competes directly with the Bowen Basin and prices against the same index. It rails west through the Rockies to Westshore, Neptune and Ridley, and winter rail performance through the mountain passes is a real and recurring constraint.
Great Lakes iron is a domestic story that rarely reaches the seaborne market. Mesabi taconite is pelletised and moves to American mills on lakers, on a shipping calendar that closes with the ice.
The Labrador Trough is the exception and the interesting one. Its concentrate and DR-grade pellet feed direct reduction rather than blast furnaces, which is the route steel decarbonisation actually runs through. The premium for DR-grade pellet is a decarbonisation trade in the same way the 65% Fe differential is.
Energy desk →| Operation | Product | Owner and note |
|---|---|---|
| Fording River, Elkview, Greenhills, Line Creek | Premium hard coking coal | Glencore, Elk Valley BC — acquired from Teck in 2024 |
| Blue Creek and Warrior mines | Hard coking coal | Warrior Met, Alabama — exported through Mobile |
| Minntac and Hibbing | Taconite pellets | US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs, Mesabi Range — domestic, not seaborne |
| IOC Carol Lake | Concentrate and pellet | Rio Tinto, Labrador Trough |
| Mont-Wright and Bloom Lake | High-grade concentrate | ArcelorMittal and Champion, Quebec — DR-grade capable |
| Powder River Basin | 8,400 – 8,800 Btu/lb thermal | Peabody and Arch, Wyoming — very low sulphur, almost entirely domestic |
Metals desk
Copper, silver, nickel and the only Western REE mine.
Arizona copper and Utah's Bingham Canyon are long-life, low-grade, high-tonnage operations that also produce most of the Western world's molybdenum as a by-product. Sudbury and Voisey's Bay supply Class 1 nickel — the material that actually goes into batteries, as distinct from the Class 2 nickel pig iron Indonesia floods the market with.
Mexico is the largest silver producer in the world, and almost none of it comes from a silver mine. It arrives as a by-product credit in polymetallic and copper operations, which makes silver supply insensitive to the silver price in exactly the way Andean by-products are.
Mountain Pass is the only rare earth mine of scale in the Western hemisphere, at roughly a seventh of world supply. Its concentrate historically went to China for separation; building that separation onshore is the whole strategic argument for the asset, and it is not finished.
Metals desk →| Operation | Product | Owner and location |
|---|---|---|
| Morenci, Bagdad, Safford | Copper cathode and concentrate | Freeport, Arizona |
| Bingham Canyon | Copper, molybdenum, gold | Rio Tinto, Utah |
| Sudbury, Thompson, Voisey's Bay | Class 1 nickel, copper, PGM | Vale and Glencore, Canada |
| Red Dog | Zinc concentrate | Teck, Alaska — among the largest zinc mines in the world |
| Peñasquito | Silver, gold, zinc, lead | Newmont, Zacatecas |
| Fresnillo, Saucito, Juanicipio | Silver | Fresnillo plc, Zacatecas |
| Mountain Pass | Rare earth concentrate | MP Materials, California — the only Western REE mine at scale |
| Silver Peak and Thacker Pass | Lithium brine and clay | Albemarle and Lithium Americas, Nevada |
Regulation
What governs who may buy, and at what landed cost.
A low-risk region with an unusually high density of legal gating items — nuclear licensing, investment review, tariffs and cabotage. None of them are negotiable and all of them are checked first.
- 01Uranium — nuclear licensing
- Possession, transport and export of uranium require authorisation from national nuclear regulators, and transfers between countries are governed by bilateral non-proliferation agreements. No amount of commercial agreement substitutes for the licence, and the licence is checked first.
- 02Canada — foreign investment in critical minerals
- Investment by state-owned enterprises in critical minerals is restricted, and several holdings have been ordered divested. It shapes who may hold an offtake or an equity stake, not only who may own a mine.
- 03United States — tariffs and trade measures
- Steel, aluminium and copper have all been subject to tariff action under national security provisions. Delivered cost into the United States is a policy variable that can change between contract and arrival, and the contract says who carries it.
- 04Canada — Indigenous consultation
- Consultation obligations and impact benefit agreements are legally required and project-critical. As in the Andes, we assess the agreement rather than only the permit.
- 05United States — Jones Act
- Cabotage restrictions require domestic waterborne movements to use US-built, US-flagged and US-crewed tonnage. It materially raises the cost of moving anything by water between US ports, and it changes the routing calculus.
- 06Mexico — mining law reform
- Concession terms have been shortened, new concessions restricted and water permitting tightened. A Mexican counterparty's concession status and water rights are verified rather than assumed from historical operation.
Execution
Rail slots, ice and export licences.
- Potash railed to Vancouver, Portland, Saint John and Thunder Bay on allocated rail capacity, with the slot confirmed before the sale
- Uranium moves in certified transport packages under specific regulation, in small parcels, with an export licence per shipment
- British Columbian coking coal to Westshore, Neptune and Ridley on the CN and CP networks — winter mountain rail performance is a recurring constraint
- Great Lakes shipping closes with ice, and the Seaway lock calendar sets the season rather than the buyer
- Independent weighing and sampling at load, with the umpire laboratory named in the contract
- Term contract reopeners and annual settlement dates diarised, because on this origin the negotiation is the product
Origination
North American producers and utilities can reach the desks through our New York trading office.