New South Wales minerals at a critical investment juncture
- 25 July 2026
Alkane Resources CEO Nic Earner says work underway to extend the life of the company’s cornerstone Tomingley gold mine highlights the direction of travel of the state’s mining and metals industry, which is seeing vital investment accelerating on many fronts.
“We’re actually moving a national highway,” Earner said last month at a mining event in Canada.
“I don’ know how often that gets done in Canada ... but in this case this section of highway in New South Wales runs straight over the top of an underground orebody we have and so capital is going into diverting the highway.”
Alkane’s government approval and spend on moving part of the state’s longest highway, the Newell Highway, is emblematic of current efforts to unlock NSW mineral wealth at speed.
Earner will be joined by the likes of Evolution Mining CEO Lawrie Conway, RZ Resources CEO Campbell Jones, NSW Minerals Council boss Stephen Galilee and others to take a deep dive into the state’s fast-moving minerals sector at IMARC 2026 in October this year.
Significant investment to expand gold output at Tomingley, Cowal, Cadia and other centres is kicking more taxes and royalties into state coffers via new jobs and higher metal output at prices still at the same elevated levels of a year ago despite a dip in 2026. The recent NSW state budget projected 2026-27 mineral royalties to climb to A$3.4 billion from $3.2 billion in 2025-26.
Beyond gold and historical bulwark coal, though, the broader NSW minerals outlook picture is arguably looking more promising than it has for decades.
The state’s Critical Minerals and High-Tech Metals Strategy 2024–2035 set out a path to double the current number of active metal mines in NSW and grow the number of direct operating jobs by nearly 50% through investment of circa-$7.6 billion in copper, cobalt, rare earths, titanium minerals, scandium, antimony, tin and other mineral projects.
Cowal gold mine owner Evolution Mining’s announcement earlier this year of c$630 million of new capital investment at the Northparkes copper-gold mine near Parkes in central west NSW underlined the company’s commitment to both the red metal and the state. It announced a smaller project at Ernest Henry in Queensland at the same time.
“We’ve always said we want to be in tier-one jurisdictions,” Conway said when asked in a Bloomberg interview about investment outside Australia and Canada.
“When you look at the returns we’re getting [predominantly from existing mines in Australia] there is not a lot of pressure for us to run out and buy other projects.
“The two projects we’ve announced at Northparkes and Ernest Henry will lift our copper exposure [from 25-30% of FY2026 first-half revenues]. We think we can have up to 40% [copper exposure] in our portfolio. We can bring that on in the next few years at a relatively low capital intensity and certainly a lot higher rate of return.”
Development of a new block cave underground project to further extend the life of the 32-year-old Northparkes mine is among more than a dozen minerals projects slated to position NSW as a more prominent player in international metal and industrial value chains over the next decade.
A new capital and ideas juncture
Australian Strategic Materials CEO Rowena Smith says the company’s highly synergistic pairing with US-based Energy Fuels, through a US$300 million merger announced at the start of 2026, was a deal that put ASM and its flagship Dubbo rare earths project in NSW at a new intersection of capital and ideas in mining.
“Partnerships like this are key to getting supply chains in place across jurisdictions rapidly,” Smith said in a recent interview.
“We [ASM and Energy Fuels] have been talking to each other for quite a while about various things ... but the environment really shifted over 12 months ago when the whole of the sector, I think, started to think more productively about partnering. For a variety of reasons the penny just dropped [and] there’s an urgency now to get into a fully vertically integrated solution and the only way to do that rapidly is to work with partners with established capability.”
Former Energy Fuels CEO Mark Chalmers agreed, saying the proposed combination with ASM, which follows Energy Fuels’ US$240 million acquisition of ASX-listed Base Resources and its Vara Mada heavy minerals project in Madagascar in 2024, was a “momentum play”.
“Right now everyone wants everything done yesterday and you’re not going to get there quickly if you don’t combine forces to come up with a full integration strategy,” he said.
Ross Bhappu, who has succeeded Chalmers as Energy Fuels CEO, said: “Outside of China there are very few rare earth metallisation factories. ASM has a commercial operating facility in Korea. The vertical integration that this allows from mine to alloys provides a tremendous competitive advantage.”
Other significant combinations are spurring increased investment in NSW copper (Aeris Resources and Peel Mining) and heavy minerals/rare earths (privately-owned RZ Resources and Japanese partners).
RZ says last year’s equity investments by Marubeni Corporation and JX Advanced Metals Corporation represented “historic, deliberate, selective and strategic” Japanese investment into upstream critical minerals. “Securing alignment with two major Japanese industrial groups ... is an extremely positive step for both RZ and for Australia, with further strategic investment anticipated to come from Japan over the next six-to-12 months,” the company said.
Recent NSW government approval of RZ’s proposed A$693 million Copi project in the state’s south-west, where the company aims to produce up to 400,000 tonnes a year of rutile, zircon, ilmenite and other minerals to feed a plant in Queensland from 2029, follows the Japanese funding announcements and what RZ described as active engagement with the United States Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and Export Finance Australia on project-level finance. EXIM had provided a letter of interest for up to US$450 million of potential financing support, the company said.
“NSW is home to some of the world’s most significant critical mineral deposits and we are focused on turning that potential into long-term investment and industry growth,” NSW minister for natural resources Courtney Houssos said when the Copi mining approval was announced.
“With 21 of the 31 nationally identified critical minerals NSW is uniquely positioned to be a globally significant supplier.”
Meanwhile, mining companies say closer and more productive collaboration with the NSW government is helping to reduce project financing roadblocks and development delays at a time of strong international competition for private investment in domestic mineral supply chains.
Warren Pearce, CEO of Australia’s Association of Mining and Exploration Companies, said last month the growth of mining in NSW into one of the state’s top income streams reinforced the importance of maintaining a competitive investment environment for exploration and mine development.
Government reforms to unlock better land access and streamline approval processes were “essential to reducing delays, improving certainty and helping responsible explorers get on the ground faster”.
The launch of a development coordination authority on July 1 to help projects navigate the planning system more efficiently shaped a “practical reform that supports investment and regional economic activity”.
This month Australian mineral sands producer Iluka Resources and ASX-listed Sunrise Energy Metals became the first two companies to take up the state government’s royalty deferral scheme, which Houssos said was the first program of its kind in Australia and one designed to stimulate production of critical minerals.
Iluka is advancing its A$480 million Balranald heavy minerals project in the Murray Basin using a novel underground extraction method. Sunrise Energy Metals is closing on a final investment decision on the $200 million Syerston scandium project in the state’s central west.
The state’s $250 million royalty deferral scheme was announced in October 2024. Royalties are deferred for five years to help defray project start-up costs but still need to be paid in full.
Balranald and Syerston are expected to provide roles for about 330 operations personnel and generate more than $250 million of LOM royalties.
Syerston was also identified as a project of strategic importance under the US-Australia critical minerals partnership.
“Approving these two projects for our royalty deferral scheme is an important next step in delivering local jobs,” Houssos said.
“NSW has abundant resources and the government is committed to partnering with industry to get production up and running. By supporting projects through the high-cost early stages of development we are helping unlock investment, create regional jobs and strengthen supply chains that are critical to the future global economy.”
A NSW Minerals Council spokesperson said the royalty deferral scheme was “a great initiative to help improve cashflow in the crucial early stages of developing critical minerals projects, ensuring these projects are set up the deliver the long-term economic benefits they will bring to NSW”.
Iluka chief operating officer Shane Tilka said the support was particularly valuable during the ramp-up phase when projects were transitioning from development into steady-state operation.
“Commencing mining at Balranald is an important milestone for Iluka and the culmination of more than 15 years of research and development,” he said.
“Using innovative remote underground mining technology Balranald will produce premium zircon, natural rutile, ilmenite and rare earth-bearing mineral concentrates that will feed our processing facilities and supply our customers for the next decade.”
