The Australian Government has approved close to $50 million in grants to accelerate the development of critical minerals projects which will help diversify supply chains, build domestic downstream processing and support new jobs and regional development.

Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King said the projects would speed up development of Australia’s critical minerals sector and help Australia and export partners lower emissions and meet net-zero commitments by 2050.

“The successful projects will create jobs and opportunities across regional Australia and help Australia realise its ambitions to be a clean-energy superpower,” Minister King said.

“The 13 projects to receive funding under the Critical Minerals Development Program grants include plans to produce key inputs to lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, and to support supply chains for advanced manufacturing for aerospace, medical, energy and defence applications.

“The grants will support Australia’s new Critical Minerals Strategy, to be released shortly and which will outline how Australia can capture the significant opportunity of growing its critical minerals processing sector.

“Australia has remarkable potential to meet the increasing global demand for the critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies, such as electric vehicles and batteries, as the world moves to decarbonise.”

The successful projects are located in:

Western Australia

• $5.5m to Australian Energy Storage Solutions Pty Ltd for a pilot to set up Australia’s first Precursor Cathode Active Material manufacturing plant in Kwinana;
• $4.6m to IGO Ltd to support its Integrated Battery Material Facility at Kwinana, which will produce high value nickel-cobalt-manganese precursor cathode active material;
• $1.2m to Tungsten Metals Group Pty Ltd for the production of Ferrotungsten Powders for advanced manufacturing for aerospace, medical, energy and defence products;
• $4.7m to International Graphite Ltd to support the International Graphite WA Mine to Market Battery Graphite Materials Project;
• $5.9m to Northern Minerals Ltd to support its Browns Range Heavy Rare Earths Project at Halls creek;
• $1m to Tungsten Mining NL to support test work for its Mount Mulgine Tungsten Project;
• $6.25m to Magnium Australia Pty Ltd to commercialise CSIRO-patented technology for clean extraction of magnesium metal, and a Magnesium Refinery Pilot Plant in Collie.

New South Wales

• $6.5m to Australian Strategic Materials Ltd for its Dubbo Project, to support mining, separation and refining, and production facility for critical minerals including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, zirconium, niobium, and hafnium;
• $2.0m to Clareville Pty Ltd for testing and scale up on its novel flotation separation additive which increases recovery of key critical minerals, such as lithium, cobalt and vanadium, by 50 per cent - with no increase in carbon emissions or environmental impacts;
• $2.9m to Ecograf Ltd to support a graphite qualification facility at Lucas Heights.

Queensland

• $5m to Queensland Pacific Metals Ltd for the engineering and design for phase 1 of a full-scale refinery for its Townsville Energy Chemicals Hub;
• $1.2m to High Purity Quartz Ltd to support a pre-feasibility study for a project to build a solar PV grade quartz sand processing facility and a silicon metal production facility to establish solar PV cell manufacturing in Townsville;
• $2.2m to Evolution Mining Ltd to support Ernest Henry Operations to retrieve cobalt from mine waste.

Further details on the grants and the successful projects are available here: https://business.gov.au/grants-and-programs/critical-minerals-development-program/grant-recipients.