From ground to growth: Australia’s strategic stake in the world’s critical minerals supply

The article was originally published in Resourceful.

Critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and manganese, along with rare earths, support a range of sectors including in technology, defence, space, and medicine. They are also the essential elements required to build the technologies needed for the world to meet its low emissions targets. They drive technological innovation, contribute significantly to Australia’s GDP and create well-paying jobs.

Designated critical for their essential role in society, supply chain security, and the economic and national security implications of their disruption on global markets, their strategic importance shows no signs of slowing.

Growing market and Australia’s opportunity

According to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2023, this growth is already being realised, with the critical minerals market doubling in size over the last five years and projected to double or quadruple by 2030.

A recent assessment by Geoscience Australia shows when it comes to critical minerals, globally, Australia is the largest producer of lithium, the second largest of zircon, the third largest of rare earths and the fourth largest of cobalt. Australia’s strategic significance in the global critical minerals sector cannot be overstated, yet most of the country remains underexplored and known valuable mineral deposits remain undeveloped. To help the world reach its low-emissions goals and grow downstream industries for Australia including in refining and manufacturing, more Australian resources will be needed.

Innovation through research and development

The Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub (the Hub) was developed in recognition of the critical role that science and innovation holds for Australia to solidify and fully capitalise on its aspirations to be a global clean energy supplier, and to help grow its economy.

Funded by the Australian Government, the Hub is a partnership between Australia’s leading science agencies, CSIRO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and Geoscience Australia, along with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources.

Director of CSIRO’s Mineral Resources Business Unit and Chair of the Critical Minerals R&D Hub, Dr Rob Hough, said through collaboration the Hub would unlock new technologies, processes, and materials to drive advancements in the critical minerals sector by addressing key technical challenges.

“The Hub is playing a system coordination role – identifying and driving collaborative research relationships and opportunities to progress R&D outcomes at pace; and supporting the scale-up and commercialisation of novel technologies to unlock new projects,” Rob said.

“Targeting R&D towards the technical challenges in critical mineral exploration and production helps de-risk projects and supports the development of strategic supply chains that will sustain the global renewable energy transition.

“All three agencies have strong links into the critical minerals R&D community, and are bringing their combined connections with industry, universities, state and territory governments and international partners to coordinate R&D to support this initiative.”

Focus areas

The Hub will focus on four key areas:

1. scaling up and commercialising Australian R&D
2. coordinating, guiding and establishing priorities for R&D
3. connecting critical minerals projects to technical and research experts; and
4. supporting strategic international collaboration with likeminded partners to advance R&D and support strategic supply chains.

Currently seven projects are underway, including three announced in January this year. All agencies will work together in partnership with industry and universities, with a lead agency for each project.

Critical Minerals R&D Hub Manager, Lucy O’Connor, said part of the Hub’s mission was to build a more coordinated R&D ecosystem to help prioritise research and avoid duplication.

“These projects were developed collaboratively by the three science agencies to address the priority technical challenges facing Australia that would benefit from public sector investment and aren’t expected to be resolved quickly by other market players,” Lucy said.

“Australia’s world class ESG credentials, including critical minerals, are an important part of our value proposition as a reliable trading and strategic partner, and supporting Australia’s ESG credentials is also a high priority for the Hub.”

CSIRO

CSIRO Mineral Resources hosts the Hub and is one of the largest minerals research and development groups in the world with a strong track record in delivering innovation and solutions across the value chain.

CSIRO is leading a project investigating more efficient purification and processing techniques for high purity alumina, and looking at how these techniques can be applied for other critical minerals.

CSIRO is also leading another project focused on downstream value chains for metals like lithium, refractory metals, tungsten ore and rare earths, by developing the intellectual property and knowhow needed to help downstream industries produce high purity metals and materials.

According to the Australian Government’s Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030, focussing on downstream refining and processing, and securing a greater share in trade and investment, could generate $139.7B in GDP and add 262,600 jobs from 2022 – 2040.

Critical Minerals R&D Hub Lead for CSIRO, Dr Chris Vernon, said building downstream capabilities created more market options for Australia to sell into, more good jobs, and diversified global supply chains.

“If Australia doesn’t build these downstream capabilities, we’ll live with the consequences. World supply chains are already too concentrated in some instances to just a handful of companies, and countries,” Chris said.

“We also know there is already interest from Australian companies to value add from their waste streams, so now we need to support them with R&D to help deliver the opportunities we know are there.”

Geoscience Australia

Geoscience Australia is leading a criticality assessment project examining Australia’s export and import vulnerabilities with respect to our economy, future sovereign capabilities, and security.

Separately, they are undertaking an assessment of potential high purity silica systems and regions to support the production, exploration and downstream industry opportunities for silicon.

Geoscience Australia is also leading a project which will estimate the resource potential of critical minerals like gallium, germanium and indium in Australian zinc deposits. As part of this project CSIRO is assessing the techno-economic opportunities for Australia to produce these minerals from existing operations, and ANSTO will explore the technical recovery of gallium from existing bauxite refineries.

Critical Minerals R&D Hub Lead for Geoscience Australia, Dr Rachael Morgan, said as a global leader in mineral systems resource assessments, geological processes and geochemical cycling, the agency would apply their expert knowledge to advance the opportunities for Australia’s critical minerals sector.

“In December last year we provided a mineral criticality assessment which helped inform the Australian Government’s 2023 update of its Critical Mineral List. We will build on our mineral criticality assessment capability and develop a dynamic forecasting capability for up to 10 years into the future, which can be used to inform policy, international partnerships and trade,” Rachael said.

“The Hub’s by-products project will address knowledge gaps that exist regarding Australia’s potential reserves and ability to produce critical minerals like gallium and germanium, which are crucial components in technologies such as high-performance computing and optical communications.

“The silica assessment project will deliver a first of its kind mineral system model for quartz deposit formation, which focuses specifically on the key geological and geodynamic factors that lead to the formation of High Purity Quartz (HPQ) deposits, and the results will be used to generate a new national quartz prospectivity map for industry.”

ANSTO

Complementing the Geoscience Australia assessment of silica, ANSTO is leading a project developing processing routes for HPQ production, and the global market potential for fused quartz products, solar cell, and elemental silicon production. This project will provide access to the technologies and knowhow required for HPQ production, in particular, high temperature chlorination for all future Australian projects.

ANSTO is also leading a project looking at unlocking the full potential of Australia’s Rare Earth Elements endowment, especially from lower grade deposits, and will establish a dedicated testing facility for industry.

Critical Minerals R&D Hub Lead for ANSTO, Dr Chris Griffith, said Australia was well positioned to contribute to the diversification of the rare earths supply chain, and that the agency was well placed to bring its more than 40 years of process development expertise to support the growth of more Australian projects.

“Australia already has a rich endowment of conventional rare earths deposits and an established track record in processing those types of deposits,” Chris said.

“Clay-hosted and ionic adsorption deposits pose some interesting and difficult processing challenges but by developing a greater understanding of the mineralogy and processing routes required to unlock their value, Australia can tap into their higher ratios of sought after magnet metals.

“With a dedicated piloting facility for processing such deposits installed at ANSTO, Australian project developers will more readily be able to determine the suitability of their material for supply into high-tech markets.”