Investment cycles can shift violently in just 12 months, reflected in the change in tone of presentations at the 2024 Battery Minerals Conference in Western Australia, compared to the far more bullish positioning heard by delegates in 2023.
Convening an expert panel to discuss the prospects of the State’s battery and critical minerals’ downstream processing sector, Australia’s Paydirt editor Dominic Piper led a discussion on what the future now realistically looked like for WA’s dream of being a leading value-add jurisdiction, given the market conditions and the delays we have seen in projects locally.
While acknowledging the obvious challenges, Mineral Research Institute of WA CEO Nicole Roocke believed the ambitions of the State’s downstream processing sector were not necessarily more precarious than they were 12 months ago.
Downstream Panel convenor, Paydirt editor Dominic Piper and panel members (left to right) Phil Baker from GHD, Warren Pearce from AMEC, Nicole Roocke from MRIWA and Chris Vernon from the CSIRO.
One of the key challenges for Western Australia was the sheer size and scale of investments that other governments were using to incentivise activity in their respective sectors. In that regard, Ms Roocke pointed out that the dominant position now enjoyed by the Chinese processors did not happen overnight either.
“China took a long-term strategic view to attract investment and deliver projects over a longer time cycle. One of our challenges here in WA is we are a mining jurisdiction, and we are used to a boom-and-bust cycle, so we take a very short-term view of some of these projects,” Ms Roocke said.
Australia and WA’s ability to make a fundamental shift to taking a longer-term strategic approach to investment in future industries is not just impacted by commodity cycles, but election cycles can also have a significant impact.
For the sector to move forward, according to Mr Piper, it was really about leveraging Western Australia’s strategic advantages, whether that was through new policies such as a production tax credit, or other measures to level the playing field where we can, to ensure we take advantage of our natural resources and skilled workforce.
Association of Mining and Exploration Companies CEO Warren Pearce agreed, saying the State was in a situation where it was broadly competitive before these global interventions.
“We might have been more expensive than other places, but we offered up the benefits. We have a highly skilled workforce, we have state-of-the-art research developments, and we have strong government support for those things,” Mr Pearce said.
“We were looking at a very big opportunity, and what you now see is the Commonwealth realising that essentially that opportunity has been displaced by the nations trying to take it from us.
“What we need to do is get ourselves back to a more competitive playing field – that means incentives to attract investment in the first place, a lot of times that is getting the capital investment for the development of the project … but it also means being able to develop the know-how to actually do these things.”
The conference will be held in Perth next week from 16 – 17 April at the Pan Pacific Perth.
The full programme is available at https://www.batterymineralsconference.com/programme/ – or for registration inquiries contact Georgia Tully at georgia@paydirt.com.au.
