Australia’s CSIRO Announces the Rare Earth Hub

Hightlights

• CSIRO’s Rare Earth Hub addresses global demand for critical minerals.
• Focuses on research, industry collaboration, and clean energy support.
• Projects include REE, High Purity Silica and Alumina, downstream value chain.

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The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (opens in a new tab)(CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications. The agency works with leading organizations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO maintains more than 50 sites across Australia and in France, Chile, and the United States, employing about 5,500 people. Most recently, the agency issued a report declaring global demand for rare earth elements (REE) nearly doubled between 2015 and 2023, driven by the demand for clean energy technologies across myriad sectors from electric autos to defense to high tech. Australia holds at least 4% of the world’s rare earth element reserves, positioning it well for market growth. The Australian Critical Minerals Research and Development Hub (opens in a new tab) aims to enhance understanding and processing of lower grade REE deposits.

This Australian Minerals Research and Development Hub (the Hub) was announced (opens in a new tab)on 21 October 2022 by the Prime Minister The Hon. Anthony Albanese and the Minister for Resources and Minister for Northern Australia, The Hon. Madeleine King.

What’s the mission of the Hub?

Hosted by the CSIRO, the Hub brings together expertise from Australia’s leading science agencies: the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), Geoscience Australia, and CSIRO.

These agencies work collaboratively to scale up and commercialize Australia’s critical minerals potential by aligning R&D to priority technical challenges and Australia’s strategic priorities. The Hub also works closely with the Critical Minerals Office at the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR).

The Hub collaborates with industry, universities, and the research community to address technical challenges and drive collaborative research across the critical minerals value chain. This effort supports clean energy and Australia’s net zero policy agenda, in line with Australia’s Critical Minerals Strategy 2023-2030 (opens in a new tab).

What is the hub’s four workstreams?

Workstream	Summary
Scaling-up and commercializing critical minerals research and development	By undertaking priority projects and identifying research and development priorities, gaps, and technical obstacles in supply chains of strategic significance. The Hub will also leverage Australia’s resource potential to support onshore processing and create opportunities in downstream high value industries.
Coordinating, guiding, and prioritizing critical minerals research and development and expertise across Australia	By fostering closer cooperation and collaboration across the domestic and international research and development ecosystem, including government, industry, universities, and other research institutes. Closer collaboration will help to reduce duplication, establish priorities for research and development across the critical minerals sector, inform future policy and funding decisions and grow Australia’s domestic capabilities
Connecting critical minerals projects to technical and research experts	By building capability and tailoring activities to meet the sector’s needs. The Hub will help de-risk and commercialize projects by creating Australian intellectual property (IP) in critical minerals research and disseminating relevant scientific knowledge freely and openly as a public good and/or protecting and commercializing it to deliver impact.
Supporting strategic international critical minerals collaboration	By advancing international research and development engagement and working with like-minded partners to support strategic supply chains.

What kind of funding will help the Hub?

The Hub was awarded a $2.5 million grant in July 2024 (opens in a new tab) to strengthen international partnerships through international R&D collaboration scans, strategic R&D projects across critical minerals technologies, and international science delegations and scholarship networks.

What projects are the Hub sponsoring?

As announced (opens in a new tab) January 2024, the Hub involves seven projects:

Criticality and opportunity assessment: Geoscience Australia is leading the criticality assessment, examining Australia’s mineral export and import vulnerabilities, and the extent to which minerals are critical for Australia’s economy, future sovereign capabilities, and security. Project outputs have been used to inform the December 2023 update of the critical minerals list (opens in a new tab). The project will build an enduring mineral criticality assessment capability at Geoscience Australia to support evidence-based government decision-making and inform Australian strategic policy on critical minerals.

High Purity Silica (HPS) – Two Projects:

• HPS Mineral Systems Study: Geoscience Australia is conducting a detailed mineral potential study of High Purity silica mineral systems to identify mineral systems and regions with the greatest potential to supply raw feedstock material suitable for silicon production, stimulating exploration and supporting the development of a downstream silicon industry in Australia.
• HPS Process and Product Development: ANSTO is developing processing routes for High Purity Quartz (HPQ) production from Australian quartz and silica sand projects, complementing the Geoscience Australia program. HPQ is used in manufacturing consumables (fused quartz products) required in elemental silicon production and a range of optical and specialty applications. This project will provide access to the technologies and know-how required for HPQ production, including high-temperature chlorination for all future Australian projects.

High Purity Alumina (HPA): CSIRO is investigating more efficient purification and processing techniques for HPA, added to Australia’s critical minerals list in March 2022. The project aims to capitalize on Australia’s plentiful supply of aluminum-containing feedstocks and develop intellectual property to assist Australian companies in this emerging market, applicable to other critical mineral processing. This research focuses on innovative purification methods typically associated with HPA production, using a wide range of feedstocks and developing new analytical capability to benchmark HPA product quality.

Rare Earth Elements (REE): ANSTO leads this project with all three science agencies involved. While Australia’s rich endowment of high-grade REE and processing techniques is understood, greater knowledge of mineralogy and processing routes is needed for lower-grade deposits, especially clay-hosted REE and ionic adsorption deposits. This project accelerates the discovery, extraction, and processing of REE from these deposits by: assessing Australia’s mineral potential for lower-grade REE deposits; developing and testing process options specific to Australia’s clay-hosted rare earth and ionic absorption deposits; demonstrating how these deposits can be used in existing REE separation technologies; establishing a dedicated testing facility; and enhancing environmental outcomes of critical minerals mining and processing.

Downstream value chain: CSIRO is developing intellectual property and know-how needed to help downstream industries produce high purity metals and materials. This project seeks to extend Australian value chains for lithium and rare earths, add value to tungsten ores and refractory metals, and produce rare earth materials for magnet-making industries and lithium metal suitable for long-life one-use batteries and solid-state lithium rechargeable batteries. Working with ANSTO, the project will develop a deep technical understanding of the conversion of tungsten mineral concentrates to high value-added chemical concentrates and tungsten oxides, complementing concurrent refractory metals metallization studies.

Critical mineral by-product potential: Geoscience Australia leads research into opportunities to develop a domestic industry for critical minerals like gallium, germanium, and indium, often by-products from processing primary commodities such as zinc and bauxite. Geoscience Australia develops methodologies and tools to understand Australia’s geological resource potential for these critical mineral by-products, and CSIRO assesses the techno-economic opportunities for Australia to produce these minerals from existing operations. ANSTO will explore the technical recovery of gallium from bauxite refining process liquors and determine the opportunity for Australia from existing bauxite refineries.

All research projects will be completed by June 2026.