The Flagship's research spans laboratory, pilot-scale and full-scale investigations.

Creating wealth through advanced processing technologies

CSIRO is helping enhance the competitiveness of Australia's minerals industry by improving the performance of existing mineral processing operations and developing new ways to extract value from low-grade or complex ores.

• 4 March 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• The challenges
• Our goal

The challenges

Increasing production costs, mounting global competition, declining ore grades, complex ores with higher levels of impurities, increasing pressure from regulators to improve environmental performance – these are the challenges facing Australia's minerals industry.

CSIRO's Minerals Down Under Flagship is working closely with mining companies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and mining technology service providers to develop technology based solutions to address these challenges.

Our research spans laboratory, pilot-scale and full-scale investigations to determine the chemical and engineering parameters that underpin the economic and environmental performance of mineral processing operations.

Our goal

We aim to help enhance the competitiveness of Australia's minerals industry by improving the performance of existing mineral processing operations and developing new ways to extract value from low-grade or complex ores.

Our research includes base and precious metals, uranium, mineral sands and rare earths.

Specific objectives are to:

• increase productivity to generate benefits greater than A$750 million (net present value) by 2015
• unlock over A$300 billion of in situ value by 2030
• double the size of the mineral processing related services and technology sector by 2015.

To achieve these objectives, our research is organised into five research streams:

• enhancing unit operations
• shaping Australia's base metals industry
• extracting precious metals from complex ores
• unlocking value from uranium and other high-potential mineral deposits
• in-place recovery of metals and minerals.