Amid sustained demand growth, India plans to build a strategic reserve of critical minerals including lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earths. The stockpile will be sized to cover six months of domestic consumption, aiming to guard against risks of global supply disruptions and sharp raw material price volatility. Led by India’s Ministry of Mines and Ministry of Heavy Industries, the reserve covers key raw materials essential for new energy vehicles, energy storage and the electronics sector, fields where India currently relies heavily on imports. At present, the United States, China, South Korea and other countries have already established strategic reserve systems for critical minerals.

Vale reported first-quarter net revenue of $9.26 billion, up 14% year on year, though slightly below analysts’ forecast of $9.37 billion. The company said higher sales volumes across its key products, including iron ore, copper, and nickel, were among the main drivers of revenue growth. The figures suggest a clear recovery in Vale’s core business revenue as commodity prices improved.

Vale’s nickel sales rose 15.2% year on year in the first quarter, while output reached its highest first-quarter level since 2020. The company said both copper and nickel production posted multi-year highs for the period, indicating a solid start to 2026 for its base metals business. The result points to improving nickel supply performance at Vale and stronger support for overall quarterly sales growth.

According to Reuters, Glencore’s 2026 cobalt export quota, together with the carried-over volume from 2025, totals 22,800 tonnes. The company produced 5,800 tonnes of cobalt in the first quarter of 2026, down 39% year-on-year. Output from its Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) and Mutanda operations that exceeds allocated quotas is being stored locally in the DRC for future sale when market conditions improve. Constrained by export limits, the company is postponing the final processing of cobalt to cut processing costs. Current inventories at the two operations are sufficient to cover near-term export quota shipments. Glencore has mostly fulfilled its 2025 export quota in the first quarter, with the remaining volume shipped in April.

The share of EQ copper cathode in imports continued to expand in Q1 2026. Following shares of 68.12% and 70.78% in January and February respectively, the EQ share further climbed to 73.53% in March. Looking at the seasonal charts from 2022 to 2026, March tends to be the annual peak for EQ share. This year's 73.53% not only exceeded the same period in 2024 and 2025, but also confirmed that under the reality of inverted SHFE/LME price ratio and import windows under pressure, EQ sources have further consolidated their position as the "main force" of China's copper cathode imports. Supply side, the previously noted "African source diversion" phenomenon was confirmed in March data. As the US increased its stockpiling of global copper cathode resources, changes in the flow of African sources remain worth monitoring. Taking DRC as an example, its March supply rebounded from 64,900 mt in February to 93,100 mt, but still fell short of January's level. This indicates that although African sources previously affected by logistics and other factors have partially recovered, under the backdrop of global resource reallocation and long-term contract diversions by multinational giants, the incremental space for DRC copper cathode flowing into China is constrained, and the price spread between EQ and registered copper continues to narrow. Unlike the supply situation of African sources, Russian and Kazakh sources saw significant growth in March. Breaking the previously relatively stable monthly import trend, Russia's copper cathode imports rose to 49,700 mt in March, a notable increase MoM, while Kazakhstan also rose to 13,900 mt. These additional EQ resources effectively filled the gap left by constrained African sources. Considering that sulfur supply and shipping capacity issues in Africa have not been fully resolved, the incremental flow of African SX-EW copper to China is expected to remain limited going forward. However, given the overall limited imports, the share of EQ copper imports is expected to remain elevated.

Lead concentrate TCs remained generally stable this week. Some mine enterprises indicated that lead concentrate TCs had almost no room for further decline, while imported ore prices were still mainly quoted at -$150 to -$130/dmt. Affected by the recent tight supply-demand conditions of zinc concentrates and copper concentrates, some suppliers of lead concentrates rich in zinc and copper adjusted the pricing methods for copper and zinc. Although the comprehensive value of such copper- and zinc-rich lead concentrates was raised, the pricing of lead and precious metals within them remained unchanged, and the silver payable indicators for lead concentrates with various silver contents in the market remained firm.