AusIMM Critical Minerals Conference 2024

The Critical Minerals Conference will feature a total of 52 live presentations from across the globe, including 6 keynote speakers and 3 panel discussions bring a focus to pushing the conversation forward on mining and the critical minerals supply chain, presenting urgent challenges and opportunities that currently exist in the industry.

Attendees of the Critical Minerals Conference 2024 will gain exclusive access to a variety of sessions, including:

• Advanced Battery Facility (ABF) Tour
• Site tour to Lava Blue’s Centre for Predictive Research into Speciality Materials
• Minerals capital projects: Drivers of excellence workshop
• Rare earth elements workshop
• Key knowledge of vanadium ore processing
  

Abstract

Australia is the lucky country but as a country we have built a reliance on selling raw products that makes us poor. In 2021, Australia is ranked the lowest in economic complexity indicators (ECI) in trade value compared to countries of a similar GDP (https://oec.world/en/profile/country/aus) according to Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). In the last 20 years Australia has gone from 33rd to 82nd position in the ECI ranking.

Australia is extracting its natural resources to feed other countries the materials required for intermediate and end products that we then buy back at a large imbalance to the balance of trade. All the most significant export trade products are unprocessed raw goods. Closures of smelters and refineries in Australia due to aging infrastructure or operating costs are exacerbating the issue. Government support for developing downstream processing options and products are minimal.

Indonesia caused an international uproar by banning sales of raw mineral products in 2014 with the aim to increase the value of minerals for export and preserve the country’s resource supplies (USAID, 2013). Indonesia now has a stranglehold on nickel metal supply. Oman despite having few metal mines of its own set up special economic zones. The Sohar Free Trade Zone has attracted 14 foreign companies, which have invested in metals, minerals and logistics including Sohar Aluminum’s smelter with downstream aluminum rolling plants, and an antimony and gold roasting plant. Large gypsum and limestone resources and deep-water ports with cheap power from oil and gas allowed construction of large gypsum dry wall product plants and limestone clinker plants.

This presentation aims to examines the role of governments in developing downstream mineral processing facilities for critical minerals and the lessons Australia could learn from growing economies around the world. Can Australia afford not to secure our children’s future through enhanced economic complexity.