- The partnership aims to secure the supply chains of raw and processed minerals by increasing investment and establishing downstream processing capabilities.
- Australia, being the world’s largest producer of raw lithium, is developing new rare earth mines in its northern region.
- This partnership follows a free trade agreement between the UK and Australia and is part of efforts to strengthen critical minerals supply chains.
The Australian and British governments have recently pledged to work together to enhance the security of global supply chains through critical minerals development. During a signing ceremony in Perth, Madeleine King, the Australian resources minister, and Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the UK minister for the Indo-Pacific, signed a statement of intent to collaborate on securing the supply chains of raw and processed minerals by increasing investment and establishing downstream processing capabilities.
King explained that Australia aims to collaborate with the UK to establish sustainable, robust, and transparent supply chains for critical minerals, which would help both countries reduce emissions and achieve their net-zero targets. The UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy, which was published in July 2022, emphasized China’s control of supply chains and the vulnerability of the British market to market shocks, geopolitical events, and logistical disruptions. The recent partnership with Australia is a step toward building more resilient supply chains.
Trevelyan expressed that the partnership between the UK and Australia, which leverages Australia’s unmatched production capacity and the UK’s mineral trading and finance expertise, would protect global supply chains from future shocks and create thousands of high-paying jobs.
Australia, which is the world’s largest producer of raw lithium, is currently developing new rare earth mines in its northern region.
This commitment by the UK and Australia to collaborate on critical minerals development follows a free trade agreement between the two nations that recently received Royal Assent in the UK Parliament. Similarly, in 2020, the UK and Australia established the Critical Minerals Joint Working Group to enhance collaboration on critical minerals, and a similar minerals agreement was signed between Britain and South Africa last year.
Attendees at the Critical Metals and Minerals Conference held in London last month were cautioned that the UK could fall behind China and the EU in the competition to strengthen critical minerals supply chains.
