Australia’s transition from a bulk commodity exporter to a globally competitive supplier of critical minerals and derived materials depends on the development and deployment of robust, scalable and environmentally responsible processing capabilities. As Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO plays an important role in supporting this transition through applied research that aligns closely with the Federal Government’s Critical Minerals Strategy and its focus on downstream value adding, supply-chain resilience and sovereign capability. This presentation provides a high-level overview of selected critical minerals processing activities currently or recently undertaken at CSIRO Mineral Resources at Waterford, Western Australia. These activities span a portfolio of projects seeking to address key processing and product-quality challenges across a range of commodities, including copper (chalcopyrite) processing, high-purity manganese production, high-purity alumina generation, graphite purification, and vanadium and titanium recovery from vanadiferous titanomagnetites. The presentation will also touch on CSIRO’s involvement in precursor cathode active materials (pCAM) development through the C4P pilot plant based at Waterford, operated in collaboration with the Mineral Research Institute of Western Australia (MRIWA) and Curtin University. The C4P facility forms a key component of the Western Australian Government’s proposed Critical Minerals Advanced Processing (CMAP) initiative. Collectively, these examples demonstrate how CSIRO Mineral Resources Processing cohort is supporting industry and government by aligning applied research capability with national critical minerals priorities and emerging downstream processing opportunities.