Kangaroos hop across the red dirt, eucalyptus and gum trees line the horizon, and beyond the bush, haul trucks move tonnes of iron ore across the world’s richest mineral provinces.
This is Australia — a country famous for its beaches, wildlife, and wide-open landscapes, but beneath the surface lies a mineral endowment that has made it one of the world’s most important mining nations.
Australia plays a leading role in global mining, with the resources sector accounting for 60% of the nation’s export revenue. The country supplies vast quantities of iron ore, lithium, gold, and coal, as well as other critical minerals essential to the energy transition.
As of December 2025, Australia had 448 operating mines producing a wide range of minerals. Roughly one-third of these mines are located in Western Australia, one-quarter in Queensland, and one-fifth in New South Wales.
Western Australia is the epicentre of Australian mining and a major player in the international mining industry, ranking as the top region in the world for mining investment by the Fraser Institute.
But Australia’s mineral wealth is becoming more than a story of what lies beneath its soil. As the world races to secure the raw materials needed for electrification and the energy transition, Australia is facing a bigger question.
Can Australia’s mining powerhouse status translate into greater control and greater economic value across the mineral supply chain?
From mineral wealth to investment magnet
Australia’s resource sector has become a major destination for international capital, with investors drawn to its established mining industry, vast reserves, and relatively stable regulatory environment.
The economic contribution is substantial. Over the decade of 2014–15 to 2023–24, the mining industry contributed to $2.9 trillion in resources export revenue, $268 billion in mining wages, $227.5 billion in company taxes, $167 billion in royalties, and generated 21% of the economy’s growth, as reported by the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA).
However, the next wave of urgency is being shaped by a different kind of urgency. Countries around the world are seeking secure supplies of the minerals required to build batteries, electricity networks, renewable energy infrastructure, and other technologies underpinning the energy transition.
The scale of the challenge is significant. The MCA estimates that by 2030, the world will need 50 new lithium mines, 60 new nickel mines, and 17 new cobalt mines simply to meet demand for electricity storage.
At the same time, global mining investment is expected to increase by US$100 billion ($140.48 billion) annually from current levels to produce the mineral commodities needed to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
For Australia, that demand presents an opportunity that stretches well beyond digging more tonnes out of the ground.
The question is whether the country can use its position as a leading mining jurisdiction to attract investment into the next stages of the supply chain — from exploration and development through to processing, refining, and potentially manufacturing.
Speaking to Mining.com.au, Green and Gold Minerals (ASX:GG1) non-executive director Edward Boulton explains that Australia must achieve greater economies of scale to secure a long-term role in global critical minerals supply chains.
“This will require extending further down the value chain into refined products and finished commodities, supported by the development of shared infrastructure that lowers costs and improves competitiveness,” Boulton tells this news service.
That shift begins with the companies responsible for finding and developing the next generation of resources.
The next mine starts with investment
For all of Australia’s existing mineral wealth, future supply cannot be taken for granted.
A mining project can take years, and sometimes decades, to move from an initial discovery into production. According to the MCA, developing a new mine can take up to 18 years for nickel and 15 years for copper.
That makes the investment environment surrounding explorers and developers critical.
Australia currently has more than 100 prospective mining and processing projects representing about $50 billion of investment, with the potential to create around 30,000 construction jobs and 20,000 operating jobs.
But prospective projects only become producing assets when sufficient capital is available to move them through exploration, feasibility, development, and construction.
For explorers, this means access to capital is fundamental to finding the deposits that could eventually supply future mines. For developers, it determines whether those discoveries can become commercially viable operations.
And for Australia, the challenge is increasingly about what happens once the ore is found.
One potential pathway can be seen in WA, where existing infrastructure is being positioned as a foundation for a new generation of mineral development.
Turning old infrastructure into new opportunities
Anax Metals (ASX:ANX) is seeking to restart the historical Whim Creek operation in WA. but the company’s plans extend beyond restarting the historical operation, with the existing infrastructure providing the potential to establish Whim Creek as a regional processing hub.
The proposed Whim Creek Project will include crushing and ore-sorting infrastructure, a new concentrator capable of 400,000 tonne per annum, and a refurbished heap leach facility capable of treating oxide, transitional, and supergene ore.
Between 2003 and 2008, Whim Creek produced 15,000 tonnes per annum of copper cathode. The new concentrator is forecast to produce between 10,000 and 12,000 tonnes per annum copper-equivalent.
A previously reported Definitive Feasibility Study update outlines a pre-tax internal rate of return of 98%, up from 54%, and free cash flow increasing 113% to $723 million, with a pre-tax net present value of $501 million.
Whim Creek has an initial 10-year mine life, backed by 4.6 million tonnes of reserves grading 1.36% copper, 2.31% zinc, 0.67% lead, 30 grams per tonne silver, and 0.27g/t gold.
But perhaps more important to Australia’s broader processing ambitions is the technology being incorporated into the project. Anax plans to use X-ray transmission ore sorting and gravity separation to pre-concentrate material before it reaches the main circuit.
Previously speaking to this news service, Managing Director Geoff Laing says this allows the company to decouple the run-of-mine ore, strip out the waste, and upgrade it before it enters the main processing step.
“This technology is currently used in all waste recycling, and is now widely being used in mining,” Laing told Mining.com.au.
“If you’re smart about how you apply it, it can really deliver huge benefits.”
The company has been working closely with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) on bioleaching — an approach that uses naturally occurring microorganisms to generate acid and assist in processing copper minerals.
Compared with conventional heap leaching, Laing says the process can reduce transportation costs and downstream processing requirements while using less power, water, diesel, and chemicals.
Whim Creek therefore highlights a broader possibility for Australia. Rather than continually building new infrastructure from scratch, existing assets could become building blocks for regional processing networks.
For developers, that could mean lower costs and new pathways to production. For Australia, it could mean retaining more of the value generated by its mineral resources.
The problem starts at the mine gate
That opportunity becomes increasingly important as the mining industry confronts a fundamental challenge: extracting minerals is only one part of the supply chain.
Green and Gold Minerals Managing Director Quentin Hill says that Australia is not yet a global leader of mineral processing.
“We must build the skills, technology, and investment needed to capture more value at home,” Hill says.
The challenge is becoming more complex as ore bodies become harder to process. Declining grades, increasingly complex deposits and long-established processing methods are creating technological, economic, and environmental challenges for the resources sector.
For decades, Australia’s mineral business model has often centred on extracting resources and sending them offshore for further processing.
Hill says that the nation’s perennial challenge is capturing value beyond the mine gate.
“Without large domestic markets or manufacturing scale, exporting minerals for processing has usually been the easiest option,” he says.
But the critical minerals race could provide an opportunity to change that model.
“Critical minerals give us an opportunity to change that. We can incentivise customers to process here, develop, and own competitive refining technology, and partner with Japanese and US end users to build Australian facilities serving secure global supply chains,” Hill adds.
That ambition depends not only on investment, but on technology capable of making Australian processing competitive.
Waste becoming a resource
Across the country, researchers are already looking beyond traditional approaches to mineral processing.
The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Enabling Eco-Efficient Beneficiation of Minerals (COEMinerals) is developing technologies designed to improve mineral recovery while reducing the resources required to process ore.
Its REFLUX suite is improving mineral separation efficiency on mine sites around the world. The new systems enable simpler and more effective recovery of copper and other minerals. It also proves effective in extracting value from tailings dams — materials traditionally treated as waste.
COEMinerals is also applying advanced beneficiation techniques to recover valuable minerals from urban waste sources. In one world-first development, the team adapted flotation processes to recover silver from end-of-life solar panels.
Researchers from the centre are also exploring new methods for extracting graphite from lithium-ion batteries while bypassing pyrolysis.
The centre is also rethinking the design of mineral processing circuits to prevent overgrinding of the mined ore, reduce energy and water consumption, and maximise mineral recovery.
Many existing systems have evolved incrementally over decades, resulting in long, complex processing systems that perform poorly.
For Australia, improving these processes could become just as important as finding new deposits. After all, the minerals required for the energy transition do not simply need to be discovered. They need to be recovered economically, processed efficiency, and ultimately delivered into supply chains that can compete globally.
Building for the next mining boom
For explorers and developers, processing and refining capacity can also determine whether a project has a viable pathway to market.
Without sufficient downstream infrastructure, a mineral discovery can remain just that — a resource in the ground without a competitive route to customers.
“The refining sector in Australia needs help through tax incentives and fast tracked approvals to achieve the scale required to be globally competitive,” Boulton notes.
“Many of our legacy smelters are now too small to remain competitive and we must invest in the next generation of infrastructure.”
Hill shares a similar sentiment, explaining that local processing and refining capacity lowers development costs and makes more Australian resources economic.
“It is also a major opportunity to grow the industry, create skilled jobs, and retain more value in Australia,” Hill says.
The Australian Government is already committing billions in public and private capital to expand domestic critical minerals processing and sovereign refining capacity, aiming to break a heavy reliance on overseas supply chains dominated by China.
One example is Australia’s Critical Minerals Facility, which is a $5 billion initiative managed by Export Finance Australia to finance mining and processing projects.
Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU) secured a $1.65 billion loan for the development of a rare earths refinery at its Eneabba operations in WA. The refinery will produce separated rare earth oxides, including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.
Commissioning of the refinery is expected in 2027, with delivery of a Feasibility Study progressing.
Bigger than a mine
Australia has already built a mining industry capable of supplying the world with enormous volumes of resources. Its next challenge is more complicated.
The global energy transition is creating demand for new mines, new discoveries, and new sources of critical minerals, putting Australia’s geological wealth back in the spotlight.
But the opportunity does not necessarily end when the ore leaves the pit.
For explorers, the task is to find the deposits capable of supplying future demand. For developers, it is about turning those discoveries into economically viable projects. For producers, it is increasingly about improving recovery, reducing costs and finding greater value in existing operations.
And for the nation itself, the opportunity lies in connecting those pieces.
Existing infrastructure, new processing technology, domestic refining capacity, and international investment could help Australia move from being primarily a supplier of raw materials towards becoming a more integrated participant in the global mineral supply chain.
The resources beneath Australia’s soil have already made it a mining powerhouse.
The next question is how much of the value created from those resources Australia can capture above ground.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Main image: Mining.com.au
