Utah mission writ large at IMARC
- 22 October 2025
Governor Spencer Cox said in his State of the State address in Salt Lake City earlier this year that Utah “must build” and on his first trip to Australia this week he was eager to cement ties with parts of the audience at the major IMARC event in Sydney after earlier events in Washington.
“We actually have been planning this trip for over a year,” Cox said.
“It just happened that we arrived on the same day that prime minister Albanese and president Trump signed an historic deal. We felt like it was inspired that we were here on the ground – the only state on the ground. We got a headstart on 49 other US states.
“We’re very excited for the connections that we're making. Relationships really matter to Utahns. We believe in collaboration.
“We have brought the largest trade delegation in our state's history. We do a couple trade missions every year. We’ve never had 80 people join us on a trade mission. We have three tracks that are here. The critical minerals track is one that is important to us and we feel very fortunate to be here at this amazing conference at this time, with the United States president and the Australian prime minister signing a very important deal for further development and investment in critical minerals and mining and processing on both continents, something that we are very much poised to participate in.”
In his fifth year as governor of Utah, Cox has emphasised “energy abundance”, including geothermal and nuclear, infrastructure and permitting reform which he says is accelerating mineral drilling and development rates on state-controlled lands.
That has encouraged a bunch of Australian lithium, antimony and other explorers to boost activity in the state. “The Utah government has really stepped up and speeded up all their approval processes, which is very significant for us,” Anson Resources CEO Bruce Richardson said at IMARC.
Cox said: “We think that building is so important and that's something that we've struggled with as the United States over the past few years. We used to be better at building things. We put too many rules in place to make it harder to build the things that we need to clean up our environment and to make energy production more sustainable.
“We have led the United States in business and GDP growth for the last 10 years; we were number one again for GDP growth last year. We’ve been named the number one state for business outlook for 17 years in a row by a publication called Rich States, Poor States – 17 years in a row. [Canada’s] Fraser Institute named us the number one state for mining [investment attractiveness] in the world last year.
“We're lowering the barriers to do business. On state lands for drilling projects, when I became governor, it took 248 days to get a permit. We’ve got that down to 45 days now.
“So we are moving at the speed of business and we want to de-risk your capital investments in ways that make sense. Your investors can feel confident that they're going to be able to get a return. Utah is the safest place for that to happen.”
Geology and geography add to the geopolitical tailwinds behind Utah’s trade push.
At the “crossroads of the West” in USA, Utah is a significant copper, potash and beryllium producer and is building its uranium, rare earths and lithium credentials.
Joel Ferry, Utah Department of Natural Resources executive director, said in Sydney: “We know how to mine. We've been doing mining for generations. The processing is what we've fallen asleep at the beach on, and we're bringing that back. We have a strategic plan. We're working closely with the federal government, both the Department of Energy and Department of Interior, on looking at federal investment and infrastructure ... My goal is that Utah becomes kind of a central hub of processing of critical [minerals] and rare earths because western United States is where a lot of these minerals are found. If you take a map, circle where all these critical minerals are, you centre that map and it’s Utah.”
Richardson said new direct flights between Salt Lake City and Seoul typified Utah’s approach to building the right international connections under the current governor.
“The only place in the world where they have an overseas office is Korea and Korea is the centre of battery technology,” he said.
“A governor Cox initiative, as I understand, to go there last year and establish the office, but also to establish a direct air link. One of our customers, LG, is Korean. That direct daily flight makes it a whole lot easier to get around.”
Richardson said Anson had been active in Utah since 2017.
“I moved to the US in 2019,” he said.
“When we went there it was a different world where everything we made in Australia was being shipped off to China for processing. We looked for a lithium project. We found one in Utah, and our intention was to process that and send it to China, which was the major market.
“Our market is now United States and now we're bringing in Asian companies as our partners to develop that.
“LG is an investor in the United States for batteries. They’re looking for domestic supply and that’s creating real opportunities for us.
“We’re now looking at how the United States is re-emerging, retooling, redeveloping and that's part of our story.”
