Western Australia is strongly positioned to be competitive in the global battery minerals space, with its project readiness, innovative approach and capacity to value add, the state’s Mines and Petroleum, and Energy Minister Bill Johnston flagged yesterday.
Speaking at the two-day New World Metals Conference in Perth, the minister highlighted the WA government’s strong support for the established and emerging battery metals sectors in an opening address.
“Western Australia has a very strong position in the tech-metal space, and we know that global economy and global energy systems are changing very rapidly,” Johnston said.
There’s a great uptake in batteries right across the world, and that’s being driven by a whole range of decisions, both political decisions and changing economics.
“We’re lucky that we’re able to put ourselves on the map in the middle of that.”
Exploration investments deliver results
He also flagged WA’s status as a producer of non-battery metals such as rare earth materials.
The minister pointed to the state’s $6.9m worth of exports of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earth elements in 2018 as evidence of its world impact in the global battery materials space.
Western Australia is the largest producer of lithium in the world and sixth largest producer of nickel.
“We were very pleased that more people are spending money to look for nickel and cobalt across Western Australia,” Johnston said.
“There’s 170 million dollars of exploration activity in 2018 – double what it’s been in the previous year.
“And it’s good to see that even BHP is looking for new nickel here in Western Australia.”
The minister highlighted the January 2019 Future Battery Industry Strategy as an effort by the government to build on 2018 momentum and “support that move into the supply of these newly important global materials”.
The state is the only producer of nickel in Australia.
Johnston said the century-old mining state was at the “leading edge of the global batteries metals industry” and had a skilled workforce and technical support industries such as processing to match.
The minister highlighted a number of upcoming lithium processing projects in WA as future income-earning projects.
These projects were the commissioning-stage 48,000-tonne-a-year Tianqi Lithium Australia project and the 44,000-tonne-a-year Covalent Lithium feasibility-study level project to open in 2021, both in the commercial port town of Kwinana south of Perth.
Interesting to see what the next year will bring, in relation to the much needed recovery in the Aussie lithium sector,(remembering the miners unable to be financed enough to get their projects up and running , needing to delay production/shipping, mergers /demergers/takeovers), and the effect on Galaxy’s trading and share price, due to its recent removal from the ASX200.
Should be fascinating to watch, what is written in the stars, and how this will all play out, in our Galaxy.
GXY Price at posting:
94.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
