Government update to critical minerals strategy includes no major commodities
Is it better to be on a list that means little, or not be listed at all? That’s the question facing Australia’s copper, nickel, zinc and aluminium producers.
Aluminium, copper and nickel will join a new list of strategic minerals as the federal government tweaks its strategy to fall in line with allies such as the US, Japan and South Korea.
However, the long-awaited update to the critical minerals strategy won’t meet the hopes of many in Australia’s mining industry who have been pressing the federal government to include major commodities such as nickel, zinc, aluminium and copper on its priority list.
Instead the government has added another suite of trace elements and processing by-products to its main critical minerals list, due to be released by federal Resources Minister Madeleine King on Saturday.
The new elements include arsenic, fluorine, molybdenum, selenium and tellurium.
Arsenic is generally seen by Australian miners as an unwanted impurity in nickel and gold deposits. Australia’s only current producer of molybdenum is US gold giant Newmont – which inherited a moly plant at the Cadia gold mine in NSW through this year’s takeover of Newcrest Mining.
The additions – and the removal of helium – take Australia’s full list to 30. Of those, only a handful are currently being produced in Australia as core commodities rather than by-products – including rare earth elements, tantalum, lithium, manganese, and high-purity alumina.
Projects targeting other members of the list including vanadium and graphite are also under development. Most of the rest are by-products of the mining and processing of other minerals.
Producers of any of the 30 minerals on the main list will be eligible for access to cheap loans from the federal government’s Critical Minerals Facility – recently doubled in size to $4bn.
But the federal government’s critical minerals strategy, released in June, also included promises of other future support, including potentially fast-tracking project approvals; discussions with key allies such as the US over possible financial support from offshore subsidy packages such as President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act; and support for third-party infrastructure such as ports, roads and water access that may be needed to develop new mineral provinces.
Even on its release the original strategy was lashed by key mining executives as lacking both ambition and direct support for the development of Australian downstream processing hubs.
Producers of commodities outside the original list – such as nickel, zinc, copper and aluminium – have argued that access to the loan scheme is far less important than support for project approvals, or shared infrastructure projects. Instead the government will add those four minerals plus tin and phosphorus to a new strategic minerals list, promising to run a feasibility study into the creation of new “strategic critical minerals hubs” to support the development of new mines, or the expansion of existing operations.
Ms King said the new category included commodities that already had well-established industries, greater global market depth, clearer price transparency, and stable supply chains.
The strategic critical minerals hubs feasibility study would explore where the federal or and state and territory governments could support infrastructure precincts producing commodities likely to become subject to supply chain disruptions, Ms King said.
“The updated critical minerals list and the new list of strategic materials will help government focus on those commodities needed to create jobs, keep us secure and power our economy,” she said. “Australian copper, nickel, aluminium, phosphorous, tin and zinc will be vital to the world’s energy transition, which is why for the first time ever we have articulated their economic and strategic importance by creating the new strategic minerals list.”
While the government plans to review both lists every three years, the resources minister has the power to review either register and make interim changes if there are any “significant changes to technology, trade, domestic capacity or geopolitical developments”.
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