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In its latest gold appraisal, industry body the World Gold Council says the performance of the gold price in the first half of this year has underscored a sensitivity to shifting macroeconomic conditions, geopolitical risk and investor sentiment, while highlighting the growing influence of global, particularly Asian, demand.

In the council's 'Gold Mid-Year Outlook 2026: Point break' report, authors Juan Carlos Artigas, Taylor Burnette and Dr Fergus O'Connor have highlighted that the price of gold soared to record highs in January, crossing above $5 500/oz before dipping to below $4 000/oz in late June. Down roughly 7% since January, gold nonetheless ranks among the top commodity performers over the past year.

At current levels, the authors add, the gold price is broadly in line with the global backdrop of moderate growth, with elevated inflation and expectations of further, albeit limited, central bank tightening.

Under these conditions, they note that gold will likely stay relatively within range at about 5% but they remark that the stage is set for a possible breakout.

On the upside, clear catalysts, including a worsening economy, renewed geopolitical shocks, a shift towards lower interest rate expectations, or a wave of dip buying could reignite gold's momentum and lift it back towards $4 500/oz or above.

Meanwhile, the authors also state that enduring central bank demand and policy shifts in key markets such as India are additional "wildcards" that could subtly influence gold's path in the second half of this year.

The authors also highlight that the price of gold is currently down by 7% year-to-date, adding that the modest drop could mask a time of drastic changes.

Building on last year's positive price momentum, gold set 12 all-time highs, surpassing $5 500/oz in late January amid heightened geopolitical risks and elevated options activity, before falling towards and briefly dipping below $4 000/oz in late June.

"The sharp price swing pushed realised volatility to more than 50%, alongside a broader rise in cross-asset volatility at the onset of the US-Iran conflict. Gold's volatility has since come down below 30%, although it remains above its 20-year average of 17%.

"Despite the recent price pullback, gold is still one of the best perfroming assets of the last 12 months, with other assets playing catch-up," the authors explain.

They also highlight the main drivers of the gold price performance being economic expansion, risk and uncertainty, opportunity cost and momentum.

In this regard, the authors explain that economic expansion supports gold jewellery buying, technology demand and long-term savings, risk and uncertainty increases the demand for gold as a hedge and a portfolio diversifier, opportunity cost makes gold more attractive as bond yields or currencies depreciate, and that momentum captures the impact of short term investment flows.

However, factors such as the strength of the dollar and interest rates rising beyond the current expectations, investor risk-on sentiment and other technical factors could bring further headwinds for the price of gold.

"In this context, our macro-based scenario analysis suggests that gold could resume its upward trend around $4 500/oz, but only a strong, clear signal may push it sustainably towards $5 000/oz," the authors highlight.

This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation.

As a global producer of materials across the aluminium value chain, Alcoa Corporation is well positioned to operate South Africa's Hillside Aluminium business into the future, South32 COO Africa Noel Pillay stated categorically on Wednesday, July 1, when the diversified Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed mining company South32 announced the signing of a binding conditional agreement to sell Hillside Aluminium to New York-listed Alcoa for up to $5.6-billion.

In addition to the Hillside aluminium smelter and the idled Bayside smelter property in South Africa, Alcoa will also acquire South32's interests in Australia's Boddington bauxite mine and the Worsley alumina refinery, as well as the Mineração Rio do Norte bauxite mine and the Alumar alumina refinery and aluminium smelter in Brazil.

South Africa's Hillside, Pillay stated, would be operated by "a dedicated aluminium producer", who would bring the benefits of "deep aluminium value chain experience" to the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where it would support local jobs, host communities, and the South African economy as a whole.

"We expect this contribution to continue under Alcoa's ownership," added Pillay, who, during Hillside's thirtieth anniversary celebration earlier this year, highlighted Hillside's meaningful contribution to South Africa's social and economic development, as well as the smelter's important role in underpinning South Africa's important value-adding downstream aluminium activity.

Interestingly, the transaction strengthens Alcoa's position as a pure-play upstream aluminium company while repositioning South32 as an upstream-focused base metals company that will maintain a South African presence through manganese mining in South Africa's Northern Cape.

At the same time, the transaction establishes a far-reaching South African presence for Pittsburgh-headquartered Alcoa, which will benefit from the unlocking of synergistic value.

Importantly, in a release to Mining Weekly, Alcoa described itself as an organisation with a deep understanding of the central role it plays within the communities where it operates.

Meanwhile, what is crucial at Hillside is the discovery of a viable, low-carbon energy solution from 2031, when the aluminium-price-based electricity contract with South Africa's State-owned electricity utility Eskom expires.

What is encouraging is the value that Eskom places on its longstanding partnership with what is the southern hemisphere's largest aluminium business.

Moreover, Alcoa president and CEO William F Oplinger highlighted the investment opportunity as one which underscored Alcoa's commitment to supply security and the responsible delivery of a product that was essential to the global economy.

Hillside's "high-quality, globally relevant assets", Oplinger added, had a strong strategic fit within Alcoa's portfolio and was directly aligned with Alcoa's pure-play upstream aluminium status.

It can be pointed out that part of the Bayside smelter has been recommissioned to take some of the liquid aluminium metal to businesses that have established themselves on Bayside's footprint, entrepreneurship that South32 endorsed, and this forms part of the transaction with Alcoa.

The overall transaction is expected to come with immediate cash flow benefits for Alcoa as it absorbs attractive long-term assets at an asking price perceived as reasonable.

This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation.

Premier private research university Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) spinout materials recovery and processing startup SiTration has completed a five-week propotype testwork programme with global miner BHP's innovation arm BHP Invent.

Together with Copper South Australia as another partner, the parties trialled SiTration's patented processing technology on local copper samples.

The testing focused on extracting gold and copper from waste streams.

SiTration successfully recovered bullion-grade gold - 99.99% purity gold - from gold-containing streams using a simplified process and also achieved 99.9% purity in copper recovery from residual waste liquids.

SiTration's core technology combines uniquely durable silicon filtration and electro-extraction stages to enable profitable and sustainable recovery of critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, nickel, rare earths and other precious metals.

The company's technology can replace traditional resource-intensive mining processes and can be deployed to recover materials from traditionally inaccessible sources, including waste.

SiTration is quickly scaling up its now validated technology, while working with global mining leaders to deploy pilot systems.

"SiTration's successful demonstration signifies a significant breakthrough in mining innovation, pioneering efficient and low-cost electro-extraction technology to recover minerals from waste and processing streams. SiTration's silicon-based electrode technology delivers strong durability, selectivity, and efficiency, enabling the recovery of high-purity products directly from dilute, complex and chemically harsh streams," says SiTration CEO and co-founder Dr Brendan Smith.

He adds that simplifying flow sheets has the potential to decrease the use of processing chemicals and reduce costs, laying the groundwork for a new era of mineral recovery.

"For the near term, we are targeting copper and gold waste streams from different BHP assets. Potential future use cases could contribute to unlocking low grade copper material that is currently seen as waste. SiTration's trial with BHP Invent validates how our breakthrough approach can modernise existing processing operations and set a new standard for resource-efficient, cost-effective mineral recovery across the industry."

BHP innovation acting VP Marley Palin comments that projects like this show how mining companies can turn big ideas into real impact, connecting global innovation with the challenges that need solving across operations.

"By accelerating innovation in processing technologies, we can maximise every tonne mined, through reducing inputs and lowering energy and water use. Together, we're collaborating to deliver safer, more productive and more sustainable outcomes," Palin concludes.

This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation.

US-based critical minerals refining and recovery company Momentum Technologies has managed to produce some of the purest rare earths ever reported at its demonstration plant in Carrollton, Texas.

This breakthrough, following the company's recent achievement of commercial-grade battery material purity from black mass refining, now makes Momentum Technologies one of the only companies in the US that can refine both rare earths and battery metals from mined ore and end-of-life materials - at commercially relevant purities.

CEO Mahesh Konduru says these milestones are a generational leap for domestic critical minerals. "Our MSX technology is achieving unmatched purity levels from multiple feedstocks and unlocking value where conventional processing can not. We are the only platform that can refine both rare earth elements and battery minerals from primary and secondary sources, which is a strategic imperative for the Western World."

The company produced 99.9% pure neodymium and praseodymium oxide from e-waste and magnet production waste, 99.5% pure dysprosium from magnet production waste and 99.5% pure yttrium from mined feedstock.

Notably, there is no commercially viable substitute for dysprosium in high-performance permanent magnets used in fighter jets, guided munitions, advanced radars, automotive drive systems and medical imaging equipment. In turn, neodymium and praseodymium is the backbone of permanent magnets powering defence systems, robotics, electric vehicles and physical AI hardware. Yttrium is used in high-performance alloys, medical imaging devices, LED lighting and next-generation defence electronics.

The US currently depends on China for more than 80% of these materials. Attaining more than 99.5% purity for heavy rare earths such as dysprosium and yttrium from diverse feedstocks used to be something only large, centralised Chinese processing operations can do.

Now, through its MSX platform, Momentum Technologies has demonstrated that this can be done using a smaller, modular system built in the US, using everything from secondary waste streams to primary mined materials.

Konduru points out that Momentum Technologies' MSX technology costs less to build and run than conventional methods, with growth possible simply by adding more modular units. MSX eliminates the need for costly, time-consuming processes that are associated with conventional processing of rare earths.

The company is working to advance a commercial-scale rare earths refining project pipeline targeting primary and secondary feedstocks, with planned capacities ranging from 100 t/y to 1 000 t/y.

This audio is brought to you by Endress and Hauser, a global leader in process and laboratory measurement technology, offering a broad portfolio of instruments, solutions and services for industrial process measurement and automation.

Platinum group metals (PGMs) have several properties that make them critical everyday-life minerals, Mintek supervisor applied chemical analysis Nehemiah Mukwevho explicated during his presentation at the Mintek PGM Industry Day, where South Africa's national mineral research organisation and one of the world's leading technology organisations specialising in mineral processing, showcased its latest PGM-relevant services, research capabilities and innovations.

"Proper data is what keeps the whole industry moving," he told the audience at the event covered by Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

Now in his twenty-second year at Mintek, Mukwevho expressed certainty that, in one way or another, audience members had, at some time or another, enjoyed the application of PGMs that are spread across autocatalysis, jewellery, chemicals, petroleum, electronics, electrical, medical and biomedical sectors.

He was one of a dozen Mintek managers, engineers and scientists who presented in the auditorium of this 92-year-old State-owned mineral research organisation, which is situated at 200 Malibongwe Drive in Randburg.

"The quantification of PGMs is very important because it guides all the plant processes," Mukwevho emphasised during his outline of the occurrence, properties, applications and analytical determination of PGMs,

Hailed by Mukwevho was Mintek's major PGM quantification library and revealed by him was the publication by the organisation of fire assay procedures to attract and retain personnel.

Mintek operates an analytical chemistry division that applies fire assay as a core technique for pre-concentrating and analysing PGMs in ores, concentrates, and geological samples and Mukwevho outlined what Mintek's fire assay know-how offers in helping to the understand PGM-bearing Merensky reef, upper group two (UG2) reef, Platreef, middle group reefs, chromites and sulphides.

Displayed were the overwhelmingly South Africa-based areas where PGM reserves are located.

Fire assay, viewed by Mukwevho as a bedrock PGM analysis method, and he outlined the information that must be provided prior to the commencement of PGM analysis for fire assay to be successful. He also spoke of incorrect estimates presenting challenges.

"This is one area where, over the years, we've had a lot of discussion," he reported.

If the proper information is not provided, many hours of work end up with "something you can't do anything with and you must redo the whole process again, but with the proper information given upfront, you're able to make good decisions".

"When we send quotations to the client, we send them with a table that gives them guidance about the amount of sample that we need, and then also why they must provide a grade estimate," Mukwevho explained at the event covered by Mining Weekly.

Delay-avoidance pre-analysis information required embraces sample grade estimates and ore type disclosure.

To produce reliable results, Mintek complies with approved calibration standards. Its methods are accredited by South Africa's national accreditation system SANAS and processes are monitored through quality control charts and internal and external audits.

Regarding the future of fire assay, several non-fire assay methods are being developed, "but fire assay for me is to remain….and we just need to keep on refining and improving it and then connecting it to other advanced instruments".

Electric fire assay furnaces are giving way to gas furnaces, "because they do help a lot with the exposure to heat, because in fire assay, we work at around 1 200 degrees C".

"With electric furnaces, you work very close to the furnace, but with the gas furnaces, you've got some distance, and then you've got control of the heat, b...