Transforming the Australian minerals industry.

Minerals Down Under: helping to transform the minerals industry in Australia

The Minerals Down Under Flagship is helping to transform the Australian minerals industry with revolutionary new technologies and ideas to solve technical challenges that will be associated with the Australian minerals industry in the future.

• 6 March 2009 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Helping to transform the minerals industry in Australia 
• The challenge 
• The opportunity 
• The vision
• Key research nodes 
• Key research collaborators 

Helping to transform the minerals industry in Australia

The minerals industry comprises 8 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product and is tightly linked to our national prosperity.

In 2007-08 it generated exports of A$99.6 billion, which was 42 per cent of total Australian exports. It also accounted for 37.9 per cent of new capital investment by Australian businesses in 2006-07.

However, the future of this important industry is not assured. New deposits are not being found fast enough to replace those being extracted and many of Australia’s deposits are experiencing declining grades. In addition, Australia’s share of global minerals investment in exploration has declined over the past 10 years.

Our research focuses on:

Discovering Australia's mineral resources

Increasing prospectivity by working with minerals explorers and Governments

Creating wealth through advanced processing technologies

Improving the performance of mineral processing operations

Transforming productivity through online analysis

Minerals, process and security on-line measurement opportunities

Driving sustainability through systems innovation

Reducing environmental impact with innovative solutions

Securing Australia's future ore reserves The Minerals Down Under National Research Flagship conducts research to support the Australian minerals industry and is looking at ways to unlock the value from previously uneconomic ore bodies.

The challenge

To secure the future of the minerals industry in Australia, we need to solve the technical challenges that will be associated with Australian operations in the future.

These include:

• limited or no outcrop
• greater depths of operation
• higher rock stresses
• increased gas levels
• lower grades
• scarcer human resources
• globally high standards of safety and health
• appropriately strict environmental and social regimes.

The opportunity

The Minerals Down Under Flagship will help transform the industry with revolutionary new technologies and ideas to solve these technical challenges.

Some projects are focussed on producing relatively short-term outcomes, but the majority are aimed at a 10 to 15 year horizon.

The vision

The role of the Minerals Down Under Flagship is to create new knowledge and transformational technologies for the mineral sector and to ensure there are appropriate pathways for the transfer of that knowledge and technologies to industry in order to improve Australia’s global competitive position.

It won’t be easy, but the potential benefits are huge.

The Minerals Down Under Flagship will assist the Australian minerals industry to exploit new resources with an in-situ value of A$1 trillion by the year 2030, and more than double the size of the associated services and technology sector to A$10 billion per year by 2015.

Key research nodes

The Minerals Down Under Flagship works with research collaborators in numerous locations around Australia. Key research nodes are located at Floreat, Waterford and the Australian Resources Research Centre in Western Australia, Lindfield, Marsfield and North Ryde in New South Wales, Clayton in Victoria and the Queensland Centre for Advanced Technologies.

Key research collaborators (in alphabetical order)

Key research collaborators include:

• all State and Territory Geological Surveys
• AMIRA International
• ANSTO
• Australian National University
• Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration
• Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing
• CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering
• CSIRO ICT Centre
• CSIRO Land and Water
• CSIRO Materials Sciences and Engineering
• CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences
• CSIRO Minerals
• CSIRO Process Science and Engineering
• CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems
• Curtin University
• Geoscience Australia
• iVEC advanced computing facility
• James Cook University
• John De Laeter Centre for Mass Spectrometry
• Julius Kruttschnitt Mineral Research Centre
• Macquarie University
• Monash University
• NASA
• Parker Cooperative Research Centre for Integrated Hydrometallurgy Solutions
• Predictive Mineral Discovery Cooperative Research Centre
• University of Adelaide
• University of Melbourne
• University of Queensland
• University of Sydney
• University of Tasmania
• University of Western Australia.

Read more about our research on Mining & Minerals Tools & Technologies.