FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

Miners Are Trying to Strike It Rich with Food and Weed Instead of Ore

Can eggs really be more valuable than minerals like ore, gold, and coal? Miners are putting down their picks and picking up their forks and knives. Metaphorically speaking, that is.
Photo via Flickr user Hugo Clément

This week, the international stock markets may be giving business people and investors palpitations, but the commodities markets worldwide have been down in the dumps for a long time. So-called "junior miners"—those who explore for metals like copper, gold, and iron ore—are largely out of work. Traders and investors in commodities are looking elsewhere to make a buck, and this problem can be seen worldwide, from Canada to Australia and everywhere in between.

Advertisement

So what are miners and those who deal and trade in metals to do?

READ: This Man Created the Ice Cube's Multimillion-Dollar Industry

"Due to the downturn in commodity prices, Australia's moving its focus from mining to dining," Sandy Chim, the CEO of Century Iron Mines, told Reuters.

That's right. Miners are putting down their picks and picking up their forks and knives. Metaphorically speaking, that is.

Chim's company is a good example of the trend. It was in the development-stage iron ore business in eastern Canada for years. This summer, though, Century got into a new business: distributing Australian eggs in Hong Kong and Macau. They hope, one day soon, to be supplying eggs to Mainland China.

Iron ore to eggs? Yes, thanks to the crash in metals prices. Former miners and metals traders are also getting into other businesses that may seem counterintuitive, at least until you think about what's on-trend right now: marijuana farming, e-cigarette production, even fantasy sports gaming.

Yari Mieken, CEO of Chlormet Technologies told Reuters, "No one has any interest in a grassroots exploration project right now." But they are interested in smoking weed. Canada, after all, made it legal in 2014 to buy medical marijuana with a prescription and the industry is expected to reach almost one billion dollars in the next ten years.

Photo via Flickr user eggrole

Edibles. Photo via Flickr user eggroleReuters

Century, though, is sticking to eggs. It wants to join the many other Australian companies that are hoping to become part of the grocery basket for Asia's ballooning middle class. As the middle class in China in particular continues to expand, someone has to feed them.

Advertisement

"We see a good opportunity to start a small, but meaningful food distribution business that can capitalize on our network in China," Chim says.

says the shift by miners out of mining and into foodstuffs is most pronounced in Canada, where most of the world's publicly-traded mining companies are found. But a similar shift from mineral commodities to food commodities can be seen elsewhere, including Australia and Brazil.

Some of Century's investors—it is a publicly traded company—are a tad ambivalent about its transition from ore discovery to looking for eggs under chickens.

Ian Morrison, an investor who owns half a million shares in Century, told Reuters, "I didn't buy this stock thinking I was investing in the egg distribution, but I've no problem with them doing other things. I look forward to seeing what their next move will be because I do not think they are putting everything they have got into Aussie eggs."

READ: Robots May Save California's Wine Industry from the Drought

Only time will tell. Can eggs really be more valuable than minerals like ore, gold, and coal? Who would have thunk it? But when you consider the 1.4 billion mouths there are to feed in China alone, maybe chicken farmers really will become the Rockefellers of the 21st century.