SYDNEY – Commodity trader and financier Traxys is growing its global footprint, adding an office in Uzbekistan, and expanding its business in the Middle East to service growing demand for critical minerals, founder and CEO Mark Kristoff said.

The trader of speciality metals earlier this year set up an office in Tashkent with around 10 staff, adding to one in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that it established last year.

"Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. All of the Stans we think can be interesting suppliers," he said on Wednesday.

"We've also been expanding in the Middle East. Obviously that's become more challenging with the current circumstances," related to the US-Israeli war with Iran, he said on the sidelines of the IMARC mining conference in Sydney.

"But we still think the Middle East is a very attractive place, based on the prevailing available competitive energy pricing and infrastructure that can support the development of semi-finished processing, which is so desperately needed."

Governments around the world have been ploughing billions into critical minerals as they look to diversify their supply chain away from dominant producer China.

Traxys is among several commodity traders tapped by the US government to manage the procurement of raw materials for its $12 billion strategic reserve of critical minerals, a Trump administration official familiar with the plan told Reuters in February.

Geopolitical uncertainty has made decision-making more challenging for many industrial end users, who don't have the network or the institutional knowledge to figure out solutions on their own, Kristoff said. That has opened up new business opportunities, he added.

Traxys has a global network of 26 offices and has grown to this year become a $12 billion revenue company from a $100 million revenue company 44 years ago.

It has 550 staff, of which 150 have equity stakes, which helps keep talent as rising global activity in metals drives poaching of staff among commodity traders.

Traxys already has offices in Cape Town, South Africa and Harare, Zimbabwe.

"So we already have a footprint, let's say in Southern Africa but we are looking at East Africa, Central Africa and other opportunities and we will continue to evaluate that," Kristoff said.

Those offices would open new opportunities in tantalum, tungsten and nickel, he said.

In other jurisdictions, Traxys has increased its presence in Peru, adding to existing operations in Brazil and Mexico City.

"We continue to look at principally sourcing opportunities in the whole South American continent. Does it make sense to expand our presence in a place like Bolivia, Argentina? We could consider that if the business is there."