Innovation, Investment and Opportunity in Critical Minerals

As part of AusIMM’s 2025 Thought Leadership Series, we spoke with Helen Degeling, Director of Geoscience and Sustainability at Mining3, and one of our expert panellists on the topic of Critical Minerals. In this Q&A, Helen shares her insights on Australia’s unique opportunities, the importance of collaboration across sectors, and the role of innovation in strengthening our critical minerals capability.

Panel Topic 2: Critical Minerals will be available to watch online from 16 July. Subscribe to our TLS mailing list and be the first to know when it’s released!

What are the biggest opportunities for Australia in the critical minerals sector? What’s our niche, and how are industry pursuing it?

Australia is richly endowed with mineral resources, including many critical minerals. Historically, we've excelled at exploration and extraction, digging up raw materials and exporting them overseas. But our greatest opportunity now lies in doing more with those resources onshore before they leave our borders.

By moving further downstream, we can retain more of the value chain in Australia, creating jobs, growing industries and ultimately exporting higher-value products rather than ore concentrates. But for too long the mantra has been that we can’t compete on price, when energy costs are higher in Australia, as are salaries and safety and environmental standards. To build on this, our niche has to be those higher value materials produced to much higher regulatory, environmental and social standards than available elsewhere in the world.

Australia’s opportunity is in producing high-value materials to world-leading environmental, social and regulatory standards. Industry is already embracing this direction by investing in decarbonisation technologies, reducing water consumption, improving ESG measurement and reporting, and supporting R&D across the board. These efforts are helping us improve efficiency, investigate alternative recovery methods like in situ leaching, and develop more sustainable ways of operating.

How should industry and government approach the task of growing capability across the value chain?

Together. Collaboration is what’s required to grow Australia’s sovereign capability across the critical minerals value chain. This needs to go beyond just government and industry, it must also include academia and research organisations like CSIRO, ANSTO and Geoscience Australia.

Each group brings something essential: industry has the drive and real-world experience; research contributes innovation and thought leadership; and government enables progress through funding, regulation and international trade partnerships.

With all three working in partnership, we have the best chance of success. We can go further, together.

What role do you think innovation and investment will play in advancing Australia’s position in critical minerals? Are there any standout examples already pointing the way?

Innovation and investment are both essential. Innovation is critical because we simply can’t compete on cost alone. We need to be smarter, cleaner, more efficient, and more transparent.

Investment is also fundamental, true for any mining project, but especially in critical minerals where the upfront capital costs can be enormous.

If we think about investment in innovation – this is the real gap. Too often, new ideas make it to lab or pilot scale but fail to progress to full commercialisation. This is partly because traditional mining investors tend to avoid projects that combine unproven technology with commodities exposed to volatile or geopolitically sensitive markets, like nickel or cobalt. The perceived risk is too high.

That’s where government support becomes crucial. Australia’s governments have been supportive at smaller scales, funding innovation to the tune of millions or tens of millions. But they don’t currently have the capacity or appetite to support full-scale commercial projects, which often require hundreds of millions to billions of dollars. As a result, scaling innovative mineral processing and refining technologies to commercial levels remains a major hurdle in Australia’s critical minerals ambitions.

Explain the nexus between critical minerals and sustainable economic development?

Critical minerals are essential to the global energy transition, but their supply chains are often highly constrained and vulnerable to disruption. Take cobalt, for example: over 70% of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet the end products, like lithium-ion batteries, are mostly used in wealthier nations that are heavy consumers of technology and often resistant to mining in their own backyards.

This creates a disconnect: the countries where minerals are sourced often see fewer benefits compared to those where the end-use technologies are developed and consumed.

Development must be fair and equitable, ensuring that the benefits of clean energy are shared across the entire supply chain. The goal should be mutual benefit.

What are the big policy shifts taking place at the international, national and state levels that are impacting the critical minerals landscape?

Internationally, we’re seeing a shift towards protectionism and de-globalisation. Initiatives like the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and battery passport requirements are reshaping global trade. Meanwhile, in some places, commodities like coal are even being reclassified as critical minerals.

Nationally, Australia is emphasising onshoring and value chain retention through initiatives like the “Future Made in Australia” policy. There’s a strong push for self-sufficiency, but framed as a positive, because it’s our national interest.

At the state level, we’ve seen improved access to funding, fee waivers and specific incentives aimed at supporting critical minerals projects.

A few years ago, policy changes focused on enabling the energy transition and sustainability. Now, the emphasis is shifting to security, defence and economic resilience. This is still aligned with critical minerals, but through a very different lens.

What unique insights or experiences are you bringing to this panel that you think could challenge or inspire your peers?

I’ve seen the critical minerals sector from multiple perspectives, including government, academia and industry. I’ve supported innovation from the policy and research side, and I’ve also tried to implement those innovations on the ground in industry. That’s much harder than it looks.

Having experienced the sector from all sides, I bring a holistic view. I understand the challenges and complexities that come with each part of the ecosystem, and I hope that perspective can offer something valuable to the conversation.