Hard to see quite where Government is going with the ‘critical minerals’ list

Tuesday, 17 September 2024

MBIE officials have taken a trip through the periodic table.

ANALYSIS: Resources Minister Shane Jones makes an undeniable point that modern economies rely on a wide array of minerals, and therefore on mining.

The “critical minerals list” released by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) on Sunday lists 35 minerals, compounds and materials that it deems essential to the economy.

“If access to some of these enabling minerals, such as aggregates to build infrastructure or phosphate to support our agricultural sector, was suddenly restricted or halted there would be serious implications for our economy,” Jones said.

If any country was importing a lot of crushed rock from long distances overseas to use as aggregate that would probably be a worry from an economic and environmental perspective, given its bulk and low value.

To put any minds at ease, Stats NZ figures confirm that hasn’t been happening.

Resources Minister Shane Jones has overseen the first stock-take of the country’s “minerals needs and weaknesses”.

It estimates imports of pebbles, gravel and crushed stone for concrete aggregates never valued more than $1 million between 2010 and 2019 and exports never exceeded $8m.

It’s harder to argue self-sufficiency, as such, is a strong reason for mining the vast majority of the other minerals on the critical minerals list.

Germanium makes the ministry’s the list as it is critical for the manufacture of semi-conductors, antimony because of its uses in EVs and the defence industry, and beryllium for its use in the aerospace industry.

But a few scoops of those minerals aren’t going to be of much use to New Zealand on their own in a supply-chain crunch, given we don’t have an EV or semiconductor manufacturing industry that could use them.

As it happens MBIE doesn’t appear to believe we have mineable quantities germanium or beryllium anyway.

A mine shaft collapse in the Karangahake Gorge, near Waihī, changed the colour of the Ohinemuri river and prompted a warning.

It seems that, no, Jones isn’t going full-on ‘survivalist’ and suggesting the country should become self-sufficient in plane parts, wind turbine blades, EVs, semi-conductors and all their raw materials.

A spokesperson for Jones explains some of the minerals are instead on the list because local supply could help secure the supply chains of our “international partners”.

To make the list, a mineral needs to be “in demand by New Zealand’s international partners” and susceptible to supply disruptions domestically and internationally.

So the policy would seem to be more about the country chipping-in and doing its bit mining minerals for our economic partners and allies in case of, well, what?

An economic war with China perhaps?

The Government is not running most of the economy with a strong eye on managing the global fall-out from such a geopolitical meltdown, though.

So the critical minerals list looks like a public policy curiosity.

Mining industry body Straterra is more put out that coal and gold did not make the critical minerals list.

They are two minerals — if you call coal a mineral — that unlike many on the list, New Zealand can mine in significant quantities.

Common sense appears to have prevailed here, at least.

There’s enough gold already sitting in the vaults of central banks to meet industrial demand for the metal for well over 100 years and New Zealand already exports more coal than it imports, in most years.

Whether their non-inclusion in the critical minerals list will be enough to see coal and gold mines de-prioritised for fast-track consenting may be a different matter though.