Major aluminum producers including Rio Tinto, Alcoa and the co-owner of the Portland aluminum smelter are backing a push for Australia to recognize their products as “critical minerals” because of their significance as building blocks of the clean energy revolution.
Aluminum and the raw material bauxite are deemed critical in jurisdictions such as the United States, Canada and Europe, but Australia’s definition of critical minerals – those the government plans to target for growth funding to help meet future global demand – is largely limited to smaller ingredients in batteries and electric cars, including lithium, cobalt and rare earths.
Rio Tinto’s bauxite mining operations in far north Queensland.Credit:Joseph Mayers
In a new submission to the Albanian government, the Australian Aluminum Council says bauxite, alumina and aluminum are “among the most widely used commodities in the global clean energy transition”.
“To capitalize on the nation’s abundance of these commodities and to position Australia as a supplier of choice, they need to be recognized as critical minerals,” said Mike Ferraro, the chief executive of ASX-listed Alumina, which jointly owns Victoria’s Portland smelter.
“Australia should be aligned with its peers on critical minerals in order to ensure it is optimally placed to capture the increasing demand for minerals like bauxite, alumina and aluminum… it is an opportunity the nation cannot afford to miss.”
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Aluminum is a widely used material in solar panels and wind turbines. Transitioning the world towards green energy sources is expected to drive a 50 per cent increase in demand for aluminum in the electricity sector, according to industry estimates, while the global car industry’s aluminum consumption is set to rise by 60 per cent by 2030 due to soaring uptake of electric vehicles.
Ferraro, the incoming president of the Australian Aluminum Council, whose biggest members include Alcoa, Rio Tinto and South32, said Australia was uniquely placed as the world’s top producer of bauxite and the largest exporter of alumina, with six alumina refineries producing about 20 million tonnes of alumina a year. Australia is also the seventh-largest producer of aluminum, with seven aluminum smelters and 20 extrusion presses.
“Australia is one of the very few countries that has bauxite mining, alumina refining, aluminum smelting and aluminum extrusion industries, making aluminum one of the few commodities for which the entire value chain from mining to the manufacture of consumer products is represented locally,” Ferraro said.