Capturing Australia’s Advantage in Critical Minerals

As part of the second panel discussion in our 2025 Thought Leadership Series, we sat down with Andrew Waltho,Consulting Director – Sustainable Mining Services, Mining Transactions and Corporate Advisory Team at ERM, to explore the evolving critical minerals landscape. With over 40 years of experience in mining and exploration, Andrew shares sharp insights into Australia’s niche strengths, missed opportunities in innovation, and the urgent need to grow capability across the value chain. 

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, without doubt, has unenviable critical minerals exploration potential. There are several essential lessons from this:

• No land can EVER be considered “fully explored.” New technologies trigger demand for R&D into new materials that drive demand for metals that were not imagined when exploration took place in the past. This isn’t new—think back to the discovery of nickel in Western Australia’s eastern goldfields, resulting exploration rush and the successful development of new projects after the region had been explored and prospected for gold for more than 100 years. The same thing is happening today.
• industry needs to look at not just discovery and development of new deposits (which we are doing well), but capturing value added by processing and developing circular economic benefits from both reuse and recycling equipment that frequently have a short service life.
• Australia has the expertise and experience required to successfully undertake R&D into new mineral processing and industrial utilisation technologies but a poor record in R&D funding and commercialisation.

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

Australia is failing to meet demand for trained scientists and engineers in a wide range of fields, especially exploration and mining. Resources industries are failing to attract talented graduates. The importance of resources industries to Australia’s economic well being, employment opportunities, the nature of work and the industry’s responses to ESG challenges are poorly understood. Government, professional bodies, industry associations and companies all have a role in addressing these issues.

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?

We should have major concerns regarding capturing the value of Australian innovation in Australia due to past performance in the retention of intellectual property and investing in R&D.

Explain the nexus between critical minerals and sustainable economic development?

• The focus of critical minerals development currently is renewable energy generation. This has clear impacts on the availability of truly technically and cost-effective energy delivery to Australian industrial, commercial and domestic users.
• The role of access to reliable, affordable energy to sustainable economic development is unambiguously documented.

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

• We are nearing the completion of a long-overdue revision of the JORC Code that sets the standards for public reporting of exploration results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves in Australia that needs to deliver improvements in all three pillars on which the JORC Code is based—Transparency. Materiality and Competence. This should have a major role in objective assessment of critical minerals opportunities.
• There is an opportunity to put circular economy concepts into practice through recycling of materials to recover and reuse critical minerals in refined form, and recover critical minerals from mine and refinery / smelter wastes where critical minerals have been discarded during production and refining of other metals. The latter is an opportunity for Australia to develop skills and technologies that could be applied globally.
  

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

• I have more than 20 years experience of multidisciplinary studies to identify:
• • exploration and acquisition opportunities for commodities that currently are not in demand, but could have a developing market due to the adoption of new technologies, especially in renewable energy and electrification, and in production of high performance alloys that could be used in existing industries to improve efficiency and reduce emissions
  • communicating these concepts to help business decision makers realise the value of these projects
• Acute awareness that critical minerals means more than rare earths and lithium
• An understanding that the renewable energy field is still evolving and that currently favoured technologies, including something as ubiquitous as lithium batteries, may be a transitional technology that may be replaced by another, future technology
• The role of supply in setting prices for commodities and driving both future demand and the development of alternatives