“The grants will support Australia’s new critical minerals strategy, to be released shortly and which will outline how Australia can capture the significant opportunity of growing its critical minerals processing sector,” Ms King said.
“Australia has remarkable potential to meet the increasing global demand for the critical minerals needed for clean energy technologies, such as electric vehicles and batteries, as the world moves to decarbonise.”
Watch on China
While some of the 13 grants are aimed at getting rare earths and tungsten mines into production, most are focused on downstream processing and refining.
The $2.2 million granted to Evolution will help the miner extract cobalt – a battery mineral dominated by the Democratic Republic of Congo – from waste rock at Queensland’s Ernest Henry mine.
The government’s attitude towards Chinese investment in Australian critical minerals projects and companies, and sales contracts to Chinese customers will be a closely watched aspect of the strategy.
Ms King said in April that “like-minded” foreign investors would be welcome, a phrase that is expected to exclude Chinese state-owned entities because of China’s perceived use of trade as a coercive tool.
ASX-listed explorer VHM Limited has been on the front line of the issue after striking a preliminary deal to sell up to 60 per cent of the rare earths mined at its Goschen project in Victoria to one of China’s major rare earths importers, Shenghe.
The Shenghe deal was expected to be formalised by early March, but is now expected to take until June to complete.
VHM told the ASX on Wednesday that it was talking to non-Chinese customers too and hoped it would still be eligible for federal funding.
“VHM are continuing conversations with strategic Western supply chain participants (Japan, USA and Europe) to complement the Shenghe Resources offtake,” said the company in a statement.
“[We] continue to seek government funding and grants through EFA and critical minerals development program.”