Australia’s mining sector must develop innovative ways of finding and extracting otherwise uneconomical ore resources to ensure the industry’s long-term viability.
As traditional ore bodies are depleted and prospective investment in mineral discovery and recovery moves overseas, Australia risks losing an important sector of its economy.
But there is significant potential to unlock the value within the nation’s minerals reserves and ensure the industry’s long-term viability by:
Australia's hidden mineral assets
Australia has substantial hidden mineral assets. The profitable recovery of impure iron ore, low-grade nickel and currently unmineable mineral sands alone could add A$750 billion to Australia’s economic resources.
CSIRO’s Minerals Down Under (MDU) initiative aims to create the technology needed to unlock the value of these mineral assets.
With its expertise in minerals processing, CSIRO Minerals will play a key role in the multi-disciplinary program and will focus on the two MDU streams of Unlocking Australian Resources and Minerals Futures, while providing supporting science for the Discovery Through Cover and Future Mine streams.
Priority commodities
Unlocking Australian Resources concerns converting currently inaccessible or low-grade resources into ore for three priority commodities – nickel, iron ore and heavy mineral sands.
Mr Jonathan Law, who leads Minerals’ involvement in the MDU project, says Australia is the world’s second largest producer of nickel, exporting more than A$3 billion worth last year. ‘But to continue and build on exports, Australia needs to cost-effectively exploit low-grade nickel laterite ores.’
The nickel laterite project, located in the historic Kalgoorlie Goldfields in Western Australia, has several advantages over international competitor projects, such as substantial resource potential, established infrastructure and politically stable location.
Kalgoorlie is the only significant nickel province in the world that has substantial resources of both nickel laterite and nickel sulfide, so there is potential to exploit synergies between the two ore styles.
The area is one of the world’s few nickel provinces with superb nickel infrastructure already in place, which can be exploited for economies of scale. Its environmentally benign setting is also a benefit.
It is these comparative advantages, specific to the Australian industry, which MDU will seek to leverage off to make the industry stronger.
“... to continue and build on exports, Australia needs to cost-effectively exploit low-grade nickel laterite ores.”
Mr Jonathan Law, Portfolio Manager, CSIRO Minerals.
Making the most of Australia’s iron ore deposits will also be an important part of the initiative, says Mr Law. ‘While the classic Brockman-style, high-grade iron ore could run out in the next 20 years or so, Australia has huge lower-grade resources, which contain phosphorus, silica or alumina.
‘There is a need to extract these materials from the iron ore to make it attractive to steel producers otherwise big iron-ore producers will consider offshore alternatives.’
Making the most of heavy mineral sands is also imperative to feed future global demand for zirconia and titanium, which is likely to outweigh supply by 2015.
A sustainable minerals industry for our future
The work in mineral futures aims to multiply national benefits from the minerals industry through dialogue on the future of the industry in the areas of triple bottom line accounting, resource management and decision support.
Strategic trends identified will also influence the technical program in other research themes.
To be successful, the MDU initiative requires a collaborative approach to research, combined with industry input and backing. Industry views the initiative favourably, with a belief it will deliver better resource utilisation and provide longer economic lives for the remote regions in which minerals wealth tends to occur.
The long-term MDU project will help create the technology needed to access and process lower-grade orebodies and keep Australia at the forefront of the minerals industry.
Read the latest media release Digging deep to reach Minerals Down Under.
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