Methodology

How PureMine Works

PureMine tracks events that can make critical minerals harder to produce, move, sell, or source. We focus on battery metals, rare earths, and precious metals. Price forecasts, market commentary, routine company updates, and background articles are filtered out unless they point to a real supply, trade, legal, or sourcing risk.

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The Problem

If your business depends on critical minerals, you need to know when something happens that could disrupt supply, delay shipment, restrict market access, or create sourcing and compliance risk. The problem is not a lack of news. It is too much noise and not enough prioritization.

Too Much Noise
Most articles are speculation, price talk, company announcements, or general commentary. They do not tell you that physical supply is actually at risk.
Not All Events Matter Equally
A disruption in a minor producer should not be treated the same as a disruption in a country or asset that matters much more to global supply.
Operational Signals Get Buried
The articles that matter most are often specific, messy, and easy to miss unless they are filtered and ranked in a disciplined way.
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Three Stages Before an Alert Reaches You

PureMine starts broad, then filters hard. Articles are collected first, checked for evidence, scored, and matched against your subscriptions before they reach your dashboard or email alerts.

1

Broad Collection

On each pipeline run, PureMine searches news sources for articles that mention a tracked metal together with signs of disruption, restriction, enforcement, legal action, or supply risk. This stage is intentionally broad.

Export bans Mine shutdowns Strikes Supply-relevant accidents Permit suspensions Sanctions
2

Evidence Gating

Not every article mentioning risk language reflects a supply-chain event. PureMine does not treat every serious incident as a supply-chain alert. An article needs a clear link to production, shipments, trade access, asset stability, or sourcing risk. We filter out or downgrade:

βœ• Speculation: "Prices could rise if there is an export ban"
βœ• Historical reference: "Similar to the restrictions seen in 2022"
βœ• Safety incident without supply impact: "A worker fatality occurred, but operations continued and no production, shipment, legal, or procurement impact was reported"
βœ“ Supply-relevant compliance event: "Authorities link an artisanal gold pit collapse to unsafe or unlicensed mining activity that may affect traceability, lawful sourcing, or regulatory enforcement"
βœ“ Confirmed event: "Government announces an export ban effective next month"
3

Severity Scoring and Matching

Events that pass evidence gates receive an internal severity score from 0 to 100. After scoring, PureMine matches eligible events to your selected metals, countries, and alert thresholds before they appear in your dashboard or email alerts.

Event Type
A confirmed export ban or shutdown scores higher than a softer review or an early signal.
Geographic Importance
Events in countries with larger supply concentration for a metal carry more weight.
Supply Chain Specificity
Named mines, operators, plants, ports, shipments, and processing assets score higher than generic coverage.
Subscription Match
Only eligible events matching your monitored metals, countries, and alert thresholds are shown to you.
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Geographic Intelligence

Not all countries matter equally for each commodity. A disruption in a country with a much larger role in global supply usually matters more than the same event in a minor producing region.

Current Coverage

Commodity
Critical Countries (Tier 1)
Global Share
Cobalt
DR Congo
~74%
Copper
No Tier 1
Chile leads at ~23%
Gallium
China
~99%
Gold
No Tier 1
China leads at ~12%
Graphite
China
~78%
Lithium
Australia
~32%
Magnesium
China
~86%
Nickel
Indonesia
~67%
Platinum
South Africa
~71%
Rare Earths
China
~69%
Silver
No Tier 1
Mexico leads at ~24%

How Geographic Weighting Works

Tier 1
Countries producing 30%+ of global supply
+12 points
Tier 2
Countries producing 5-30% of global supply
+6 points
Other
Countries with smaller market share
+0 points
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Alert Levels

Events are classified by evidence strength and expected supply relevance.

Strong
A high-confidence event with strong evidence and a clear path to supply disruption, market-access restriction, source instability, or compliant procurement risk. These are the alerts that deserve immediate review.
Examples: Confirmed export bans, named mine shutdowns, force majeure, permit suspension, customs seizure affecting mineral flow, enforcement actions affecting lawful mineral supply
Watch
A credible event with supply relevance, but the evidence is earlier stage, narrower, localized, or less complete. These alerts are meant for monitoring and follow up.
Examples: Early protest coverage at a mine site, initial labor disruption, early enforcement reports, or informal-supply incidents that may affect sourcing risk but do not yet show broad disruption
Filtered Out
Collected but excluded because the article is speculative, historical, promotional, off topic, or lacks a clear supply-chain, market-access, source-stability, or compliant-procurement connection.
Examples: Price forecasts, analyst opinions, routine company announcements, policy commentary without confirmed action, or isolated safety incidents with no reported supply or sourcing impact
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Risk Categories We Track

PureMine groups events into seven risk families. The core rule is simple: the event must make supply harder to produce, harder to move, harder to sell, harder to procure compliantly, or make an asset or project less stable.

Production Disruption
Mine accidents, labor disruption, power and water outages, operational shutdowns, logistics failures, cyber incidents, and weather events are treated as production disruption only when they interrupt output, operations, or shipment flow.
Permit and Asset Control
Permit suspensions, mining license corruption, expropriation, fraud, and legal disputes that weaken operating rights, control, or project stability.
Trade and Border Barriers
Export bans, export license controls, tariffs, customs blockages, sanctions, smuggling enforcement, and other restrictions affecting market access and cross border movement.
Illegal and Informal Supply
Illegal mining enforcement, informal or artisanal mining incidents, illicit refining, smuggling, and related events tied to grey supply, black market processing, traceability risk, or unlawful production chains.
ESG and Compliance
Environmental enforcement, human rights risk, child labor, unsafe informal extraction, and other events that affect whether material remains commercially and compliantly procurable.
Project Viability and Financing
Guidance cuts, capex delays, bankruptcy, default, offtake breakdowns, and royalty or tax changes that weaken project economics or future supply.
Social License and Security
Protests, armed conflict, site security incidents, and civil unrest that threaten operations, access, or long term stability.
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Example: How It Works

Here is what a buyer facing alert looks like in practice:

1
Article detected: "Authorities warn over unsafe informal gold mining after pit collapse"
2
Validation: The system checks whether the article is only a safety incident, or whether it also indicates informal supply, unlawful extraction, regulatory enforcement, source instability, or compliant-procurement risk
3
Classification: If supply relevance is present, the event is grouped under Illegal and Informal Supply or ESG and Compliance rather than ordinary production disruption
4
Operational use: Procurement and compliance teams review whether sourcing exposure, traceability risk, or supplier-screening requirements have changed

Signals, Not Noise.

Set your metals, countries, and thresholds. We surface the events that actually change supply decisions.

Configure Monitoring β†’