The New South Wales Minister for Natural Resources Courtney Houssos has announced the state’s government will be investing $2.5 million for a Critical Minerals Exploration Program.
The government is incentivising explorers to find the next major critical minerals deposits.
Under the new investment, explorers can receive assistance to help wider exploration and go further into the regions of New South Wales in search for critical minerals. The applicants are required to contribute 50% of the funding to the project.
The funding will support four key streams including exploration geochemistry, geophysics, and drilling.
Up to $250,000 will be available for exploration drilling more than 250m, while $150,000 will be available for drilling less than 250m. Meanwhile, $70,000 will be available for geophysics and $50,000 will be available for geochemistry.
The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) supports this incentive from the Minister of New South Wales Government, “taking a proactive approach and reinforcing their commitment to exploration and the critical minerals industry”.
CEO Warren Pearce says the sector needs more incentives like this from the New South Wales Government to discover new critical minerals deposits.
“It shows a high-level of understanding and listening to the concerns of industry from Minister Houssos,” Pearce says.
“If we can get it right at the ground level, New South Wales can position itself as a major player in the critical minerals space.”
On 31 March, Mining.com.au reported Australia’s defence sector had taken centre stage at Avalon 2025 – touted as the largest aerospace and defence expo in the Southern Hemisphere, which is considered an important event given Australia is enriched with a suite of critical minerals and metals needed in the defence industry.
The nation’s list of 31 critical minerals contains minerals essential to the country’s modern technologies, economies and national security, specifically the priority technologies set out in its Critical Minerals Strategy. The list of minerals are those for which Australia has geological potential for resources, are in demand from strategic international partners, and are vulnerable to supply chain disruption.
Australia’s list includes critical minerals such as high-purity alumina, antimony, gallium, graphite, indium, lithium, manganese, nickel, REEs, tungsten, and vanadium, among others.
There’s many in the junior exploration space focused on such minerals. These include ABx (ASX:ABX), American Rare Earths (ASX:ARR), Astute Metals (ASX:ASE), Black Canyon (ASX:BCA), Burley Minerals (ASX:BUR), Cazaly Resources (ASX:CAZ), Critica (ASX:CRI), Firebird (ASX:FRB), Iltani Resources (ASX:ILT), Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT), Kingsrose (ASX:KRM), QEM (ASX:QEM), Solis Minerals (ASX:SLM), and Victory Metals (ASX:VTM), among others.
As reported, in December 2024 NATO published a list of 12 defence-critical raw materials that form the backbone of military hardware. These include aluminium, beryllium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, lithium, manganese, platinum, rare earth elements, titanium, and tungsten.
These critical minerals are indispensable for the jet engines of fighter aircrafts and the semiconductors in missile guidance systems, among other applications. Yet for many Western nations an underlying issue or concern is that China controls the lion’s share of global processing capacity for many of the aforementioned 12 raw materials.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock
