Kazakhstan to build on $1B in investments

Kazakhstan, the world’s largest uranium producer, wants to diversify its mining sector and build on $1 billion (C$1.4 billion) in private investment over the past five years, a conference in the capital Astana heard this week. 

The Central Asian nation, known for state-controlled Kazatomprom (LSE: KAP) as the biggest uranium supplier with some 40% of the market,  has “promising reserves” of rare earth minerals, according to Margulan Baibatyrov, a high-ranking official with the Ministry of Industry and Construction.

The former Soviet republic could become one of the world’s top 10 rare earth producers, Baibatyrov told the mining summit of China, Hungary, Italy, Kyrgyz Republic, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The recent discovery of the Kuyrektykol deposit, estimated to contain 800,000 tonnes of rare earth metals, would place Kazakhstan behind only China and Brazil by reserve size.

The nation plans to increase its geological exploration area by one-third, or 680,000 sq. km, by early 2026, Baibatyrov said at the third annual event. About 1.6 million sq. km. of the country’s area is being geologically explored, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told a Foreign Investors Council meeting last October.

Chromite, copper

Kazakhstan also has the second-largest reserves of chromite, after South Africa, privately held KAZ Minerals has major copper mines Aktogay and Bozshakol, while Glencore (LSE: GLEN) mines zinc, lead, copper, gold and silver at operations in the country’s east. 

According to official geologic data, Kazakhstan currently has more than 980 deposits of solid minerals. Since 2018, it has issued 2,906 exploration licenses and 111 production licenses, but only a dozen of the sites are undergoing exploration activity. International companies alone contributed $80.6 million to exploration efforts in the country during the period, Baibatyrov said. 

 “We began prospecting work at 11 sites in 2022, and in 2024, that work was completed,” he told the mining congress.

The sites contain 17 elements including neodymium, lanthanides, tellurides, and lithium, crucial for technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and microelectronics. Baibatyrov stressed the growing demand for lithium.

“All our phones contain lithium; it is in every battery,” he said. Why has lithium ended up in such high demand? Because battery, chip and electric vehicle production is accelerating.”