Weekly brief · week of 26 Oct 2026
The week in data, 26 Oct 2026
24 stories on the ten materials in the last 7 days, 5 of 31 plants with furnace-hot pixels, and 6 serious disaster alerts worldwide.
This week
- Rare earths, Graphite, Lithium: China's pause on its October 2025 export controls is due to end on 10 Nov 2026, in 11 days. Pillsbury / RAWMATERIALS.net
- Heat at the plants: 5 of 31 sites showed furnace-hot pixels in the last 7 days, Norilsk the most often (7 of 7 days). NASA FIRMS
- Sulphur dioxide: IMIP Morowali read above 2 Dobson units on 5 of the days seen this week. NASA GIBS
- Armed conflict: 240 events near the supply chain in September 2026, most of them around the Bab-el-Mandeb strait (218). UCDP
- EU defence tenders: 85 weapons, 49 ammunition and 8 explosives notices in September, against monthly averages of 75, 41 and 9 over the year before. TED
- EU imports: China supplied 90% of what the EU bought from outside the EU of permanent magnets of metal (rare earths) in August 2026, the highest share among the products tracked. Eurostat Comext
- Rio Tinto inaugurates $985m Argentine lithium operations mining-technology.com, 30 Oct
- IMC Rare Earths reports yttrium discoveries at Brazil project mining-technology.com, 30 Oct
What to watch
- 10 Nov 2026: China's pause on its October 2025 export controls is due to end
- 15 Nov 2026: Applications close for Indonesia's 2027 nickel mining quotas
- 27 Nov 2026: China's suspended ban on gallium, germanium and antimony exports to the US is due to resume
- Most covered this week: Rare earths (8 stories), Lithium (6 stories)
Assembled automatically every Monday from OreOrbit's own data and the week's headlines; no person or AI writes it. Each point links to its source. All weekly briefs