Guy on Rocks: Almonty building into international tungsten industry
This week, Guy looks into the coming metallic demands of humanoid robots before turning to a tungsten developer in Almonty Industries (ASX:AII) who has been making some big strides.
The company has been receiving some high valuations, so Guy looks into the tight tungsten market and the other factors that he thinks might be to Almonty's benefit as it continues construction of the Sandong tungsten mine in South Korea.
The views, information, or opinions expressed in this video are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of Stockhead.
Stockhead has not provided, endorsed or otherwise assumed responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article. Viewers should obtain independent advice based on their own circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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News.com.au
20 hours ago
- News.com.au
Aussie butcher Adam Speering stuns world with Asian wet market job
Australian Adam Speering always wanted to be a butcher but he never imagined it would be on the streets of one of Asia's biggest wet markets. 'I've been in Singapore now for 10 years,' he told CNA Insider's Singapore Hour. 'This is mine and my wife's shop. 'The environment when I come here in the morning is very quiet, there's only me and a few stores open at that time of morning, then after about a couple of hours, you start to hear the people coming through and it starts to get a bit louder. Maybe bring more people.' Mr Speering's store, Outback Butchery, opened its doors at the Lor 4 wet market in Te Paio two months ago. Growing up in Sydney, he knew he wanted to be a butcher from a very young age and dropped out of school at 14 to begin to learn the trade and follow in his father's footsteps. The now 42-year-old's trajectory changed when he met his wife Ann on a night out when she was holidaying in Australia. The pair wed in 2015 and later decided to return to Ann's home country of Singapore to raise their children. 'You don't know what to expect when you get to the other country,' Mr Speering said. 'So it was a bit difficult to start with, but because Ann's family is here … they're very close family. 'It took me about a month to get used to it here. Then after that it's just like normal.' When Mr Speering arrives at the store in the mornings, his first line of business is to make the sausages – the most popular item – then moves on to preparing the minces, patties and meatballs. 'It takes about three to four hours to prep everything in the morning,' he said. In the video, Mr Speering points to his cuts, adding: 'We are a specialised sort of store … we specialise in handcrafted stuff, sausages, patties, all value-added items.' 'I will buy from my supplier, then I will give to you for cheaper. 'I only chose $9 (for) one kilo. 'This one is good for stew, but this one you must cook for very long, this one you don't have to, this one is more tender than the brisket – it's good to pass on that knowledge to the customer. 'We get a better interaction with the customer, that's why we have a lot more repeat customers as well, because we are not just like your normal wet market butcher.' The biggest challenge has been the language barrier with Mr Speering not able to speak Mandarin, and many of his customers not knowing English. The solution? Hand gestures. 'The language barrier is not so bad, but when they can't speak English to me, normally we do like hand gestures, like our shoulder or leg or, you know, like body parts where they want,' he said. 'Then we sort of communicate with sign language. 'I think generally most of the time it's very funny because we all just point at the body part, then we have a giggle after it.' He said on the home side of things, he enjoys raising his children in Singapore as it is 'safer' and offers a lot more 'opportunity' when it comes to learning about different cultures. 'My family, they love it here, so for me, home is where the heart is,' Mr Speering said. 'My kids love it, my wife is from here. 'I think I miss Australia, but at the same time, I'm comfortable here in Singapore. 'I can still go back home any time – but for me, home is here in Singapore.'
ABC News
21 hours ago
- ABC News
China's carbon emissions may have peaked thanks to renewables push
Climate experts say China's carbon emissions may have peaked, which could affect global climate targets, the fight against global warming — and the Australian coal industry. China is currently the world's biggest emitter, accounting for some 30 per cent of global carbon emissions, but a report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) found that in the year to May 2025, China's CO2 emissions dropped 1.6 per cent. China policy expert at CREA Belinda Schäpe said the trend had also continued in the months since. Ms Schäpe told the ABC the finding was "really unique" because the only other times the country had recorded a year-on-year decline in CO2 emissions were during times of economic downturn, like the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's really quite a historic result," Ms Schäpe said. "It's due to a really rapid increase in renewables build-out in China that has translated into an increase in power generation coming from clean sources and driving down the coal share in the power mix, and with that, bringing down emissions." She said China led the world in green energy uptake. "In May [2025] alone, China built out 90 gigawatts of solar capacity, which is really huge. It translates to roughly 100 solar panels per second. "We are now at a point where solar and wind capacity is actually bigger than all thermal power capacity. So not only coal, but also including gas, oil and other fossil fuel sectors." Li Shuo, director of the China climate hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told the ABC he thought that despite previous emissions fluctuations, the country would continue to reduce its carbon output. "It certainly suggests that after three decades of very rapid economic growth, and also growth in China's emissions, the emission peak point for China has come very close, if it has not happened already," Mr Li said. "We have certainly entered into, if not yet an emission peak, a plateauing period for China's emissions. "We have entered a new phase of China's emissions, a phase that features a stabilisation of China's emissions and increasingly large-scale integration of China's renewable energy power, which, I hope, will actually make the country reduce its emissions from this point on." If the world is to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the amount of emissions released into the atmosphere needs to come down, not stabilise, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate experts say a failure to limit global warming below that figure will result in catastrophic consequences for people and the planet. Despite the rapid installation of renewable energy plants across the country, China is still building new coal-fired power plants. Beijing approved on average two coal-powered projects a week in 2022 and 2023, after power shortages in 2021. Belinda Schäpe said a backlog of these projects was now coming online, but they were using less coal. "There's been a significant drop in coal imports … in June, there was a 25 per cent year-on-year drop in coal imports," she said. "In June, China's power demand growth was actually 70 per cent higher than last year this time around, but solar and wind power generation met 89 per cent of that power demand growth. "That's what we've been seeing over the last six months, really, where renewables, or solar and wind in particular, accounted for 24 per cent of total electricity generation. Chinese President Xi Jinping has pledged to continue phasing down the country's coal consumption in the next five years, between 2026 and 2030. Jorrit Gosens, a climate change and energy policy fellow at the Australian National University, said Australia needed to rethink the future of coal mines. "The writing is on the wall a little bit in the future economic potential of that industry," he said. China imports roughly 30 per cent of Australian thermal coal exports, making it Australia's largest market. Dr Gosens said China's increasing wind and solar power generation, combined with increasing domestic supplies of coal, created a "double whammy" for Australian coal exports. "It should be expected that those export volumes will continue to decrease over the next few years." Other Asian markets of Australian coal, such as South Korea and Japan, would follow suit as they decarbonised, he said. Dr Gosens pointed to the Mt Arthur coal mine in NSW, for which BHP could not find a buyer because of the shrinking demand of coal and its liabilities, like rehabilitation costs. He said local community leaders and the federal government needed to transition communities historically reliant on coal mines into other industries. "Currently, we're still seeing more resistance to change than embracing of that transition, which I think is a risky strategy given the demand for our product is not going to be determined by those local communities or by the federal government," he said. "Our best bet really is to make sure that there are viable alternatives for when it does get to that point." US President Donald Trump's policy agenda has seen green energy subsidies replaced with coal subsidies. Li Shou said it was clear that the two countries were now on different paths. He said some conservative forces within China may use the US's withdrawal from clean energy as motivation "for domestic inaction", but he was confident that it would not change the country's policy direction. "China has over the last decade or so become the superpower when it comes to wind technology — deploying and manufacturing wind, solar batteries and electric vehicles," he said. "This will not change because of what is happening or not happening in the US and if anything, Beijing will just continue with this green path because doing these things is ultimately in the country's long-term economic interest. "There has been a realisation on the Chinese side that they should continue and double down on their climate and environmental agenda, not because of the global situation and the US situation, but just for their own sake, to clean up the skies in major Chinese cities." China is set to announce its new climate reduction targets as part of the Paris agreement later this year. He said that would tell the world a lot about where the global appetite to reduce emissions was at. "Whether China chooses to coordinate with some of the other geopolitical powers will also tell us a lot about where the global climate agenda stands and to what extent countries, including China and Australia and the European Union, can still engage," Mr Li said.
ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
US drops sanctions on Myanmar junta's allies after military chief praises Donald Trump
The United States has lifted sanctions on several allies of Myanmar's ruling generals and their military-linked companies in a move that has prompted concern from politicians and rights groups. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a 2021 coup, deposing the civilian government and sparking a civil war that has killed thousands, displaced 3.5 million left and half the nation in poverty. The US Treasury announcement it would lift the sanctions came two weeks after Min Aung Hlaing sent a glowing letter of praise to US President Donald Trump, in response to his threat of tariffs, and commended him for shutting down US-funded media outlets covering the conflict. Rights groups say the decision risks undermining efforts to hold the country's military regime accountable. The US Treasury said it had dropped sanctions against KT Services & Logistics and its founder, Jonathan Myo Kyaw Thaung, who were sanctioned in 2022 for leasing Yangon's port from a military-owned firm. Others delisted include the Myanmar Chemical and Machinery Company and Suntac Technologies, which were previously sanctioned for producing arms, including tanks and mortars. A US Treasury spokesperson said the removals were conducted "in the ordinary course of business" and declined to explain why the individuals were removed from the list. A senior Trump administration official said the decision was unrelated to the general's letter. John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, described the decision as "extremely worrying" and said it suggested a weakening of the US sanctions regime. "The individuals involved are not marginal players; they have facilitated the junta's arms imports from countries such as China and Russia," analyst Sean Turnell told the ABC. "These are people who are closely tied to Myanmar's war economy. "Lifting sanctions on them sends the wrong message." The sanctions decision comes as Myanmar's military continues deadly air strikes against civilians. In May, a junta air strike on a school in Sagaing region killed 20 students and two teachers, according to local witnesses. The strike was carried out despite a purported humanitarian ceasefire called to help the nation recover from a devastating earthquake. In July, more than 20 civilians, including children, were reportedly killed in another air strike on a monastery sheltering displaced people. Amnesty International data has shown that the military has continued importing aviation fuel despite sanctions, enabling lethal air strikes across the country. This year, the junta's China and Russia-backed forces have clawed back ground on the northern front. State media also said its soldiers managed "to fully retake" the gold mining town of Thabeikkyin this week. Early this month, as part of a slate of import tariffs Mr Trump ordered, Myanmar was notified of a 40 per cent tariff to take effect on August 1. On July 11, Min Aung Hlaing responded by proposing a reduced rate of 10 per cent to 20 per cent. US Democratic Representative Ami Bera, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, said the decision to lift the sanctions "goes against our values of freedom and democracy". However, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that sanctions delistings "were collected over the last year in accordance with standard Treasury course of business". The US maintains sanctions against Min Aung Hlaing and two state-owned banks, the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) and Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank (MICB). Mr Turnell said it was important to keep individuals and banks involved in the military's procurement network on the sanctions list as it could complicate efforts to restrict the regime's access to foreign currency, which remains critical for weapons purchases. "Even Myanmar's allies, such as Russia and China, insist on payment in dollars or euros," Mr Turnell said. "That makes financial sanctions one of the most effective levers the US still holds." ABC/wires
