Column: Maritime logistics at the sharp end of the critical minerals race

[Ben Graham]

Beijing and Washington’s competing – and occasionally adversarial – critical mineral policies have turned resource security into a new type of battleground where traditional shipping models are tested.  

Beijing still accounts for around 70% of global rare earth mining and roughly 90% of processing as well as a dominant share of advanced magnet manufacturing – the highly sought after and valuable end product for crucial industries.  

In April this year, China imposed export controls on seven rare earth elements (REEs) and related products, a move that caused disruptions across valuable industries, including the EV, defense and AI sectors. Those controls still remain in place today. 

And then in early October came an expansion of these restrictions covering additional REEs, magnets, lithium battery materials and related resources. That escalation created a serious risk of supply bottlenecks for Western manufacturers and placed stress on their shipping partners. In early November, after the Trump–Xi meeting, China agreed to suspend its October expansions for roughly a year and to issue general licenses covering a basket of critical materials for U.S. end users and their global suppliers.  

While the European Union has welcomed the agreement and is working with Beijing on a licensing system of its own, EU and US entities still face the older April rules and the possibility of controls snapping back after 2026. 

For shipping operators and commodity traders, volume and routing changes are new considerations in addition to regulatory ones. Meanwhile, Western governments are pouring capital into new upstream opportunities in Central and Southern Africa, Brazil, Australia and Ukraine – and even into seabed mining pilots in the Pacific.  

Every tonne that is diverted away from China-centric flows has to travel along longer and more complex maritime routes to refiners and manufacturers in North America, Europe, Australia and allied Asia.  

At the same time, the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Review of Maritime Transport notes that bulk and container freight rates in the past two years have been volatile and elevated due to geopolitical shocks in the Red Sea, Black Sea and the primary canals. Critical mineral routes are beginning to intersect with exactly these chokepoints. The result is a market that demands more ships, flexibility and sophisticated logistics management rather than simply more bulk capacity. 

This is where the large trading houses with embedded logistics operations are coming into their own. BGN Group, Traxys and Gerald Group in particular illustrate how traders are evolving into integrated maritime logistics platforms for the energy transition. 

BGN Group, widely considered a fast-growing crude, LNG and LPG player, has diversified in 2025 by building a dedicated metals and minerals trading desks aimed at energy transition materials — including copper, cobalt and potential rare earth exposure. The Geneva-based firm has also entered into a pivotal critical minerals agreement in Africa focused on traceable exports of cobalt and other strategic metals. Its U.S. arm, BGN USA, has established a centralized digital commodity hub for large buyers that supplies highly sought-after AI and defense-led demand for African critical minerals.  

For maritime logistics this new and sudden reality appears to favor those operating a hybrid operations model. On one end of the chain BGN, for example, deals with major and highly automated deepwater hubs that are designed to handle very large gas carriers (VLGCs). On the other, it must lift material from comparatively shallow or infrastructure-limited ports in developing regions that it operates in. That requires a mix of smaller bulk and multipurpose ships, flexible storage arrangements, and a routing model that is comfortable combining analog ports with fully digital ones. 

Beyond BGN, a broader set of metals-centric traders is emerging as the connective tissue of the new supply chain order. Traxys, a mid-tier global trader headquartered in Luxembourg, has built an integrated battery minerals portfolio including copper, lithium, graphite, cobalt, and rare earths. Traxys isn’t only a middleman. It helps producers in remote areas by arranging transport, storage, shipping and the financing needed to get their minerals to market. That allows mines in places such as Central Africa and Latin America to plug directly into global refineries, cathode plants and OEM supply chains well before traditional infrastructure would normally allow. 

Similarly, Gerald Group – the world’s largest independent, employee-owned metal trading house – has been re-expanding its presence in copper, concentrates and allied battery metals. Gerald leverages its longstanding experience in moving industrial metals across diverse and sometimes fragile trade lanes. Its renewed push into energy-transition metals provides mid-tier mines with access to reliable freight capacity, port handling, and risk-management structures that can be difficult for individual producers to obtain on their own. Together, these traders illustrate how the metals sector – not just energy traders – is becoming a central architect of diversified critical mineral flows. 

Global container lines are also playing a key role. Maersk and Evergreen now sit at critical pinch points in these supply chains. Maersk’s routing decisions – such as whether to transit or avoid the Red Sea due to security conditions – directly affect lead times, freight costs and insurance premiums for containers carrying lithium chemicals, permanent magnet alloys and intermediate battery components moving between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Evergreen, meanwhile, has ordered 14 new LNG dual-fuel containerships, an expansion that boosts long-haul Asia–Europe capacity and offers lower-emission transport options. For automakers and tech OEMs seeking to decarbonize their upstream logistics, such fleet upgrades matter as much as mining outputs or refinery capacity. 

Are these firms, and the maritime sector more broadly, genuinely ready for the freight that a full-scale diversification away from Chinese processing would imply? They may already be ahead of the curve but the task in front of them is certainly not small.  

First, new mines often sit in infrastructure poor regions with limited accessibility. Until rail spurs, roads and power are in place, ships cannot lift meaningful volumes. Second, refiners in friendly jurisdictions still lag China in scale and scope. Even if raw materials sail from Africa or Latin America to Europe or North America, midstream processing capacity may remain the bottleneck. Third, the regulatory environment is fluid. China’s April controls remain in force, and the current suspension of the October package is explicitly time limited. 

Yet the direction is clear. Critical minerals are now firmly embedded in national security strategies from Washington to Canberra and Brussels. Governments are funding new corridors through both upstream and downstream investments in ways that create long-term demand visibility for maritime transport. Trading houses and container lines are pivoting their shipping portfolios toward metals and critical minerals and also experimenting with hybrid shipping models and flexible fleets, as they enter this rapidly growing market. 

The current pause in Chinese export controls has provided breathing space but not certainty. Over the next year, maritime logistics decisions will be crucial in determining whether Western diversification plans for critical minerals turn into physical reality. The companies that can align ships, ports, data and finance in a coherent way are already emerging as key architects of this new supply chain order, and their choices will ripple through freight markets well beyond rare earths and battery metals. 

Saiid Bakir is a MENA energy researcher based in Dubai