The Govt's mining plan quite sensible, really

As oratory goes, Shane Jones knows how to spark a response. He was in fine form late last year at Blackball, West Coast, the home of the New Zealand Labour Party, where he launched the draft ‘Minerals Strategy for New Zealand to 2040’.

It was a packed and cheering hall. He was in fine form again last Friday, at OceanaGold’s Waihi operation, where he bookended matters with the launch of the finalised strategy and critical minerals list. After formalities he waved and cheerily headed off to ‘survey his golden kingdom’ having poked the bear some months earlier with remarks about frogs and departure lounges.

You could be forgiven for taking the Minister for Resources’ provocations seriously but that would be a mistake. Dig deeper and you’ll find a minerals strategy to 2040 that sets the playing field to transform the sector through responsible and sustainable practices. This is a strategy that revisits the notion of ‘ore’ – that’s the stuff the miners chase to make money, and it is timely.I spoke about this in a keynote at last year’s NZ Geoscience Society Conference. If we want to resource the future, a low-emissions future that generations to come can enjoy, we need to change the definition of ore. And as a society, we need to be open to having informed conversations about mineralised environments and trade-offs, without resorting to the easy position that comes with a blanket anti-mining ideology, or an aversion to populist politicians.

Currently, we mine more minerals and metals globally than ever before; we use more per capita than ever before. You’d think we could do a better job of recycling but that only works in a circular way when there is enough spent product available to be recovered at scale. As internal combustion engine cars fade away, lead will be plentiful through recycling. Not so the critical metals and minerals.

In our transition to clean energy technologies, we need volumes of metals and minerals that are not yet available in sufficient quantities to meet demand. To appreciate the scale of the challenge, just think about the vital statistics for Tesla’s Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, USA, which produces lithium ion batteries. The factory has a 35 GWh capacity per year – equivalent to what is needed to run 500,000 Teslas per year – and it’s scaling up to 100 GWh.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the 35 GWh capacity is stored in NMC-811 batteries. (it isn’t but it’ll give you an idea of the metal intensity of the operation). That requires ~3,885t lithium, ~3,290t cobalt, ~26,250t manganese, and a lot of graphite. To put it in perspective, that’s 0.8 percent of the 2023 global nickel supply and 2.2 percent of the 2023 global lithium production. There are 300 gigafactory-type developments completed, underway, or planned around the world.

Now consider the geopolitics. China processes the bulk of the world’s supply of copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements. The strategic value of these (and other) metals and minerals has never been greater.

For centuries, ore has been defined as a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted. Although Jones’ strategy undeniably is about profit, his definition of ore is much richer and grounded in geopolitical reality.

Existing mine waste (tailings, fill) and discarded products are recognised as ore that with better processing, recovery and recycling could contribute value. This is all about nose-to-tail extraction: if you’re going to eat the pig, don’t just take the fillet and chuck the rest away. Take gold for example. The profit is in the yellow stuff, but the geopolitical value is in the accessory metals, like tungsten and antimony, that sit in tailings dams and waste rock.

Value creation is all through the strategy, with nods to regional development, trade-offs that carry benefit, and supply chain resilience in relation to critical minerals. Could more have been said in relation to environmental and social value creation – absolutely. Transforming the sector is not just about recognising and communicating existing good practice. It would have been good to see the connection between profit (e.g., royalty sharing) and social and environmental value creation better articulated.

I would question whether metallurgical coal (or coking coal) should be on the critical minerals list. It has been used and in demand for steelmaking, but with technological developments in steel production and the overwhelming need to reduce emissions, it’s hard to see how this is anything but a short-term stay for a sunset industry.

But, as an economic geologist with a strong commitment to social and environmental wellbeing, this is a strategy that gives me hope. In content and intent, it redefines ore as a material from which a metal or mineral can be extracted to create value. This is an important step in the right direction for sustainable practice, social licence and societal resilience.

Professor Simon M. Jowitt, Arthur Brant Chair in Exploration Geology and Director of the Ralph J. Roberts Centre for Research in Economic Geology, University of Nevada, USA, contributed to this article.