As Australia looks to secure its supply of critical minerals in an ever-changing geopolitical environment, ensuring that Australia is innovating in all parts of the critical minerals supply chain is essential. Historically, investment into critical minerals technologies in Australia has had a heavy upstream focus. However, to be able to properly exploit its resources, Australia needs to develop onshore mid- and down-stream processing capabilities. To understand how well Australia is placed in the mid- and down-stream sectors, we need to understand who is investing into developing technologies related to each part of the supply chain in Australia. In this presentation, we focus on the level of investment in nickel, cobalt and lithium technologies, using patent data as a proxy for the state of development of technology mainly related to mid- and down-stream processing of these critical minerals in Australia. In particular, we look to identify the strength of innovation in each of these areas in Australia. This helps us to identify gaps in our supply chain and the areas that require further investment for Australia to ensure a reliable supply chain into the future. We used the patent data to explore and identify who the major investors are in the critical minerals sector and where the major investors are based. We looked into the big players internationally. We also investigated who the major players are in Australia. The data reveals that the major international players are filing into Australia in nickel, cobalt and lithium technologies, indicating that certain players are looking to monopolise all parts of our supply chain. The data also revealed that there is really only one Australian player (the CSIRO) that is innovating in mid- and down-stream technologies for nickel, cobalt and lithium.