Strategic Minerals
If you wanted a temperature check on Western Australia’s exploration sector last week, you didn’t need a feasibility study.
At first glance, the WA Mining Club’s Market Outlook Luncheon at Optus Stadium looked like it would follow a familiar script.
AI isn’t the risk in mining.
There was a time when mining’s job was simple: dig it up, ship it out, repeat.
When PLS chief executive Dale Henderson told the WA Mining Club’s November luncheon that it’s “easier to get things done in Brazil than in Western Australia,” the room went quiet for a moment.
If you think the most exciting innovations in critical-minerals exploration are happening in labs or boardrooms, you might want to take another look at the drill pad.
A new study has shown that bioleaching can strip more than 90% of sulphur and iron from coal waste, neutralising its acid-generating potential and creating a saleable by-product.
In mining, every generation gets its own frontier.
When global power plays, policy whiplash and economic shocks collide, opportunity hides in the chaos — and for Australia’s critical minerals sector, survival now depends on strategy as much as supply.
Mining loves a neat correlation – tonnes per shift, dollars per ounce, emissions per unit, but as Peter Burton pointed out at AusIMM’s Critical Minerals 2025 in Perth, one thing that refuses to fit a tidy graph is safety performance.
