A week ago, the shareholders of Canada’s Neo Lithium approved the sale of the TSX Venture Exchange-listed company to China’s Zijin Mining for about $960-million. The announcement received little coverage and appears to have bothered almost no one in the federal government. It should have.
While Neo Lithium is hardly a household name, and the company is relatively small, its purchase should have raised a stink not just in Ottawa but in Washington and among North America’s electric-car makers. That’s because lithium is an essential component of the batteries that power electric vehicles (EVs), a suddenly burgeoning market, and vast amounts of the global supply of the light, silvery-white metal are going to Chinese companies.
Go Incognito
