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Electio Invest Electio Invest is a leading global alternative asset management company focusing on

commodities, primarily Technology Metals. Electio Invest was founded by a group of like-minded high net worth investors as a niche investment platform enabling judicious investors

to diversify their portfolios into the Investment Sector.

Electio Invest - Demand For TechnologyMetals Rising - Special Report by Electio

Invest

Millions of people in emerging economies are aspiring to a Western lifestyle; at the

same time demand for metals is soaring due to the booming global population. As

technology advances, the variety of metals we use is also expanding. As an unfortunate

result of this, the fears regarding scarcity of metals and depletion of resources have

returned in the past ten years or so. These concerns are focused on the future supplies

of metals such as lithium, indium, tellurium, Technology Metal elements and germanium. All of these metals are crucial to producing new digital and low-carbon

energy technologies, and this includes electric and photovoltaic cars.

China reduced its exports of Technology Metals back in 2009 when this issue came to

global prominence, and the government was trying to keep up the supply to its very

quickly expanding domestic manufacturing economy. Socio-economic and geopolitical

risks, such as labour relations in southern Africa and territorial disputes in Asia, can

disturb supply because technology metals are not produced in very many locations. The issue is compounded by commercial barriers. Compared to the markets for copper,

iron and aluminium, the markets for these materials can be risky due to the fact that

they re not easy to extract and their markets are complex, small and volatile. The

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industrial, scientific and policy communities must combine together to ensure that

supplies of these metals are secured for future technology. The governments have

commissioned many assessments, and these have all fallen short. They do identify key

issues, but they also generate lots of non-effective discussion on whether certain metals

are critical. Generally their solutions are generic and of no practical use. One such

response has been the idea that securing technology metals in the United Kingdom and

mainland Europe could be achieved through recycling. Certainly, recycling is veryimportant when managing stocks of common industrial metals, however applying this to

technology metals would be very complex. Some materials are impossible, or

impractical, to recover after use. It s obvious that more primary sources must be found

to continue meeting the rising demand, and to replace lost technology metals. We need

to better understand the geological processes that concentrate these metals if we are to

find new resources. The flows of individual metals must be mapped from the ground to

their final form if we are to avoid unintended environmental impacts, and also to increase

efficiency.

These Are Rare Resources

In the past forty years the demand for technology metals has exploded, with eighty

percent of the cumulative global production of Tech Metal elements, gallium, indium

and platinum-group metals occurring since 1980. It s expected that growth will continue

in the foreseeable future. Most of the technology metals are found in only a few areas:

for example, in 2011, 57% of indium originated from China and 72% of global cobaltcame from the Democratic Republic of the Congo: these metals are produced in low

quantities. In 2011, 1.5 billion tonnes of crude steel and 45.2 million tons of aluminium

were extracted globally, compared with just 72,900 tonnes of tungsten. It s been the

conclusion of some studies that the scarcity and depletion of technology metals are

unavoidable, because rising consumption will exceed current reserves. What these

forecasts fail to remember is that geological reserves are dynamic; expanding as metal

prices rise and the extraction of lower-grade ores becomes economical, and contracting

as prices fall. A combination of technical advances and price pressures has managed tokeep global reserves of most of these metals either steady or growing during the past

fifty years. There has been little need to look for technology metals until recently

because they were of little economic interest. Because of this, very little is known about

their distribution on the Earth, or what natural processes concentrate them. With

increasing knowledge we should be able to explore new frontiers and also re-appraise

old mining areas. For example, in 2009 at Norra Karr in Sweden, a significant deposit

of heavy Technology Metals elements was identified, and in southwest England

previous mines could hold promise for tungsten. However, a major challenge can be to

overcome public objections to new mines, particularly in the developed world where

people are very hesitant to embrace the repercussions of overt consumption.