The NSW government will defer up to $250 million in critical minerals royalties and speed up project assessments in a bid to kickstart the state’s industry amid growing national and global competition.
Announced on Friday as part of a Critical Minerals and High-Tech Metals Strategy, the move makes a dozen investment ready mining and processing projects across the state more attractive to backers.
The projects need around $7.6 billion in capital investment to get going, with much of it required early on, according to the state government which is forecasting 2,700 ongoing jobs from the projects.
The NSW sweeteners also arrive in time for projects to have a two year development runway for a landmark federal critical minerals production incentive.
“We are sending a clear message to Aussie and global miners: invest in NSW,” Premier Chris Minns said.
“This is about backing regional jobs and manufacturing jobs, and taking advantage of the critical minerals boom.”
The royalties deferral will be opt in and last up to five years for projects starting after July 2025. Proponents will need market caps less than $5 billion, easily ruling out mining giants like BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore.
The quicker approvals are expected to come through a new joint assessment by the Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure and NSW Resources.
NSW has globally significant resource deposits including 21 of the 31 nationally declared critical minerals, with the mining of them directly employing around 4,000 people.
Five metals have been identified as priorities in the new state strategy: rare earth elements, scandium, copper, silver and cobalt.
The NSW government wants to increase mining and refining, while making critical minerals a bigger part of priorities like clean energy and domestic manufacturing.
The strategy focuses on encouraging exploration, incentivising production, establishing supply chains, developing future-ready skills and engaging communities.
“We want NSW to be moving further down the supply chain,” Minister for Natural Resources Courtney Houssos said.
“Extracting minerals is a critical first step, but we can generate strong economic returns and support more jobs by getting into processing and advanced manufacturing.”
Other short to medium term initiatives in the strategy include co-investing in exploration programs, investigating options for a common user rare earth refinery with ANSTO, and partnering with the federal government on infrastructure development.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that over the next two decades, the world will need six times the amount of critical minerals currently mined to reach global net-zero carbon emissions.
The state plan comes ahead of a federal government’s Critical Minerals Production Tax Incentive, to encourage downstream refining and processing of Australia’s 31 critical minerals.
The federal initiative, a key pillar of the Albanese government’s Future Made in Australia agenda, will offer a refundable tax offset of 10 per cent from 2027.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.