Kaolin is one of those minerals that is used in everyday life...

Kaolin is one of those minerals that is used in everyday life but is consistently overlooked, unlike higher profile mining products such as rare earths, lithium and gold.

Yet, a closer look at what it is used for shows how indispensable kaolin actually is.

Paper, rubber, paint, ceramics, fibreglass, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals are just some notable examples with about 5kg of kaolin used in the manufacture of each car.

According to Grand View Research, the kaolin market is expected to climb from $US4.76bn in 2019 to $US6.3bn by 2027 with current supply impacted by environmental constraints and the exhaustion of premium production in the UK and US.

Demand for halloysite, a rare derivative of kaolin, is also high as demonstrated by Andromeda Metals (ASX:ADN) signing a binding offtake agreement with a Japanese customer last month for the supply of 5,000tpa of a premium ceramic grade product.

But it is the conversion of kaolin into high-purity alumina (HPA), which is used in a variety of high tech applications, including coating porous polymer separators that are used in lithium-ion batteries to improve safety by improving thermal performance, that could really see the white mineral take off.

Indeed, CRU Consulting has forecast that HPA demand could climb from some 30,000 tonnes per annum in 2020 to 272,000tpa by 2028.