Key transactions & industry newsWeekly Update 08/21/2026

What We Found Interesting This Week

Alcoa and U.S. Department of Energy to Explore Critical Mineral Recovery from Bauxite Residue in Arkansas


Alcoa’s selection by the DOE for a pilot project recovering critical minerals from bauxite residue in Saline County, Arkansas is part of $162M in department funding across nine projects aimed at extracting valuable materials from industrial and mining byproducts, and the specific target here is gallium, a mineral where U.S. supply vulnerability is close to absolute. Almost all of the world’s primary gallium supply comes as a byproduct of China’s aluminum industry, and China has already demonstrated its willingness to restrict exports, leaving the U.S. without a reliable domestic source for a material essential to semiconductors, defense systems, and high-performance electronics. The Arkansas angle is historically grounded, as the state’s bauxite district produced an order of magnitude more bauxite and alumina than every other US district combined between 1898 and the early 1980s, and gallium was actually recovered there as a byproduct from 1947 to 1983 before the operations wound down, meaning the residue sitting in Saline County is known to contain the mineral rather than speculated to. Alcoa plans to test a microwave-based extraction technology that has worked in labs and at small scale but has never been proven commercially, with the DOE explicitly framing its role as helping Alcoa compress the timeline, on the logic that the supply chain cannot wait ten years for a conventional development cycle. The government’s commitment to this recovery model is building momentum, with the Gramercy site in Louisiana, where roughly 30 million tons of stored bauxite residue are being processed for rare earths, iron, and other critical minerals, having already received a preferred investment from the government, making the Alcoa pilot the second federal bet on red mud as a domestic resource rather than a legacy liability. For Alcoa, success would convert a long-term environmental liability into a revenue stream, and for the government, it would establish a template for the residue inventories accumulated across decades of American alumina production.

Recent M&A Transactions

Metals & Mining

Aug 21, 2026 – Bunker Hill Mining (TSX:BNKR; OTCQB:BHLL) is buying Silver47 Exploration (TSX-V:AGA; OTCQX:AAGA) in an all-stock deal valued at about $163M, creating a larger US-focused silver and critical minerals company. (Mining)

Aug 17, 2026 – UCC Environmental, a global leader in sustainable engineered solutions for air pollution control, water and wastewater treatment, solids handling, and wear-resistant performance parts, announced the acquisition of Cast Steel Products, a worldwide supplier of engineered cast, forged, and fabricated wear, abrasion, and heat-resistant products. (UCC Environmental)

Aug 17, 2026 – Canadian gold and copper producer OceanaGold plans to acquire Australia’s ​Ausgold in a deal valued ‌at $552.7M. (Reuters)

Transportation & Logistics

Aug 17, 2026 – A.P. Moller Capital’s A.P. Moller Capital - Emerging Markets Infrastructure Fund II ("EMIF II") and APM Capital Morocco Fund have signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Globex Investissement, a leading Moroccan logistics company. (GlobeNewswire)

Aug 17, 2026 – Life Couriers, a global leader in delivering time-critical healthcare logistics solutions, announced the completion of its acquisition by JLL Partners, a New York-based middle-market private equity firm focused on investing in the healthcare, industrials and business services sectors. (BusinessWire)

Building Products & Materials

Aug 20, 2026 – James Hardie Industries will sell its European Fermacell business to Swiss building-materials company Holcim as it seeks to focus on higher-growth and higher-return markets. The provider of exterior home and outdoor living solutions will receive ~$980M in cash from the sale. (WSJ)

Aug 19, 2026 – GMS Inc. announced that it has acquired the assets of Evergreen Building Products, a leading distributor of EIFS, stone, stucco, and related products with four locations in Washington serving the Pacific Northwest. (BusinessWire)

Energy

Aug 21, 2026 – U.S. independent power producer Sol Systems unveiled the acquisition of a 200-MW solar project in Hardin County, Texas, from renewables developer-operator DESRI. (RenewablesNow)

Aug 20, 2026 – Continental Resources announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire FireBird Energy II LLC, a portfolio company of Quantum Capital Group. The acquisition of FireBird, which owns approximately 54,000 net acres in the Midland Basin, significantly expands Continental’s Permian Basin position and adds high-quality, oil-weighted production and development inventory adjacent to its existing operations. (PRNewswire)

Aug 17, 2026 – Equinor has agreed to acquire an interest in the Lackawanna Energy Center, a 1,483 MW gas-fired combined cycle power plant in Pennsylvania. Under the definitive agreement, Equinor will acquire 87.71% of the Class A shares in Lackawanna for $940M subject to a potential purchase price reduction at closing of the transaction. (Equinor)

Others

Aug 18, 2026 – Goldman Sachs had reached an agreement to buy private real-estate investment firm LCN Capital Partners in a deal worth up to $410M. (WSJ)

Aug 17, 2026 – Madison Air Solutions inked a deal to buy Ebm-Papst for $5.4B, including debt. Madison Air, which provides air-quality solutions, said the acquisition will add to its portfolio of new products that will help customers improve uptime, efficiency and productivity. (WSJ)

Top News Stories

Metals & Mining

Trump administration to back U.S. minerals projects with $500M in grants. The U.S. Department of Energy is awarding $500M in grants to seven companies building domestic lithium, cobalt and other mineral and battery projects, the latest in ‌a string of investments aimed at bolstering American mining and processing.

Alcoa and U.S. Department of Energy to explore critical mineral recovery from bauxite residue in Arkansas. The U.S. Department of Energy and Alcoa are teaming up on a pilot project in Saline County, Arkansas, to recover critical minerals from mining waste left behind by earlier bauxite operations.

U.S. aluminum extrusion demand to hit 4.2Mt by 2034: Which end-use sectors will drive demand? The United States is emerging as one of the most important markets for aluminum extrusions, with demand spread across transportation, building and construction, electrical and electronics, machinery and equipment, consumer durables and other industrial applications.

Jamaican bauxite takes a Louisiana route to Ghana’s aluminum industry in proposed $60M deal. Ghana is looking to Jamaica for a solution to one of the biggest gaps in its aluminium value chain: alumina supply. The two countries are negotiating a proposed $60M arrangement that would see Jamaican bauxite processed at a refinery in Louisiana and the resulting alumina shipped to Ghana for aluminum production.

STG buys large aluminum stockpile from Radiant World as trader seeks cash. STG, a trading company funded by principals of U.S. hedge fund Squarepoint, has bought a substantial volume of aluminum from Radiant World as the commodity trader sells inventory to raise liquidity, according to two industry sources.

Transportation & Logistics

CK Hutchison seeks $1.5B in damages from Panama. Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison said it was seeking more than $1.5B in damages from Panama after the country seized two canal ports caught in the crosshairs of U.S.-China tensions.

Green light for new U.S. port that will handle 2 million containers a year. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has granted a federal permit authorizing construction of the Louisiana International Terminal, a major Port of New Orleans development intended to expand the Lower Mississippi River gateway’s capacity for larger ships and growing cargo volumes.

Americold’s Port Saint John bet stitching DP World and CPKC into one cold chain. Americold isn’t an ocean carrier, a port operator or a railroad. But it is leveraging partnerships with those entities to build a North American network. That’s the thesis behind the Atlanta-based company’s newest facility, a roughly $80M import-export hub that formally opened in June at one of the fastest-growing container gateways on the Atlantic seaboard.

Energy

Guyana now entitled to nearly 40% of production from oil block, president says. Guyana is now entitled ​to 39.8% of crude ‌production from a large ExxonMobil-led offshore project, the country’s ​President Irfaan Ali ​said.

KKR makes $9B takeover bid for energy distributor UGI, WSJ reports. Private equity ​firm KKR has offered to ‌buy U.S. natural gas and electricity distributor UGI Corp for $9B, ​the Wall Street Journal ​reported, citing people familiar ⁠with the matter.

Nvidia to provide up to $105B guarantee for OpenAI’s Ohio data center. Nvidia has agreed to provide a guarantee of up to $105B to help OpenAI lease a sprawling data center in Ohio ​being developed by SoftBank-owned SB Energy, in one of the chipmaker’s largest infrastructure financing commitments.

WhiteWater-led venture approves Permian-to-Texas gas pipeline project. Infrastructure company WhiteWater and its joint venture partners Devon Energy, MPLX, Diamondback Energy, and Western Midstream ​Partners, said they had reached a ‌final investment decision to build two natural gas pipelines from the Permian Basin to Katy, Texas.

Others

JBS proposes to acquire remaining stake in Pilgrim’s pride. JBS submitted a proposal to Pilgrim’s Pride to acquire the rest of the poultry producer’s shares it does not already own.

About RJM

RJM & Company is a specialized M&A and capital markets advisory investment bank. We provide boards and management teams of public and private companies with independent advice and expertise in a variety of sectors including road, rail and marine transportation, infrastructure, chemicals, energy, metals and mining, manufacturing, building materials, and other coverage areas of the industrial complex. RJM advises clients on all aspects of transactions including timing, structure, and pricing. RJM originates opportunities and helps negotiate and execute transactions already under evaluation.

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