With a rich endowment of battery-related minerals, australia and Western australia in particular are uniquely positioned to support the global energy transition away from fossil fuels. Nickel is a key element in modern battery technology, delivering higher energy density and greater storage capacity at a lower cost. Battery storage is a key enabler for renewables and decarbonising energy. Historically, australia has predominantly exported intermediate nickel products including matte and mixed hydroxide product (MHP). an opportunity exists for australia to capture significant additional value from further processing of intermediate products to battery materials. The establishment of a domestic precursor cathode active material (pCaM) industry is one pathway by which this can be achieved. apart from development of a sovereign capability, onshore processing would be expected to provide lower emission pathways from ore to pCaM. Research to identify improved pathways from australian ore to pCaM is being undertaken by CSIRO and Curtin University in australia's only Cathode Precursor Production Pilot Plant (C4P) facility. located in Perth. The two research institutions are partnered with and financially supported by the Minerals Research Institute of Western australia (MRIWa) via project M10569. Leveraging the capability originally created by the Future Battery Industry Cooperative Research Centre (FBI-CRC), the current project aligns with the objectives of Western australia's Battery and Critical Minerals Strategy 2024-2030 to increase onshore processing of raw materials to higher-value products. The C4P is the key component of the proposed Critical Minerals advanced Processing (CMaP) common user facility. The current presentation will outline results from R&D activities over the past year, including assessing pCaM tolerance to high impurity feed stocks, exploration of alternate battery chemistries, increasing operational flexibility (batch/continuous) and CFD modelling.