Critical minerals in New Zealand: Where they are and what might be mined

A new map reveals a treasure trove of buried minerals dotted around New Zealand – some on pristine islands or in our beloved national parks. And while the critical elements can be used to produce products from military weapons to electric vehicle batteries, extracting them for commercial use may not be straight forward. Mike Scott reports.

In special spots on the West Coast of the South Island, there is sand that might look ordinary, but it isn’t.

Pick up a scoop and let it fall and zirconium, titanium and rare earth elements will run through your fingers.

Each is classed as a critical mineral – part of the group that forms the building blocks of electric vehicles, wind turbines, satellites, data centres and modern weapon systems.

You might assume these minerals are uncommon, yet they’re not. Like the sprinkling sand dropping from your hand, they can be found far and wide across New Zealand.

For decades, they were neither in demand nor widely valued, but that view has shifted as modern technologies have become increasingly dependent on them.

A drive to secure critical minerals means more mining may be coming for New Zealand.

They’ve now become a hot topic. Critical-mineral mining is heavily concentrated in China and with rising geopolitical tensions, governments are reassessing how secure their supply chains really are.

As demand grows and new technologies emerge, prices have become increasingly volatile.

Countries, including New Zealand, which has known deposits in coastal sands, volcanic zones and rock formations, are revisiting mining laws.

So, what are New Zealand’s “critical minerals”? Which of them lie within New Zealand’s earth and where? Which can feasibly be extracted, where do they go and when might a mine appear in your neighbourhood?

What are the critical minerals?

Dr Isabelle Chambefort, general manager – energy at Earth Sciences New Zealand (formerly GNS Science), makes it clear minerals have always been critical.

“Humanity has been developed around mining.

“It has been the keystone of civilisation. It gave economic stability and gave us an increase in our technology.”

Dr Isabelle Chambefort, general manager – energy at Earth Sciences New Zealand, examines rock material. Photo / Mike Scott

Since ochre and flint played their early part in human development, minerals with names like vanadium, germanium and zirconium have taken up the “critical” mantle.

“With the transition away from fossil fuels to more renewable energy, it is highly demanding on new materials, new minerals and new elements.”

In 2024, GNS was commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to produce a minerals prospectivity report, which led to 37 minerals being classified as “critical” to New Zealand.

The ministry describes the purpose of the list as “an important first step to ensure a secure supply of the minerals we need for our economic growth and resilience ... identifying minerals that are economically important, vulnerable to supply risk, or essential to unlocking other critical minerals”.

Other countries have similar lists. The United States’ one is long, with 60 minerals listed. Australia’s list has 31 and the European Union’s 34.

But what is critical to one nation isn’t to another and New Zealand’s list has its own distinctive flavour.

Alongside the expected high-tech minerals, we include aggregate and sand – essential for roading and core infrastructure – metallurgical coal, used for steel production, and gold.

The United States and Australia leave aggregate, sand, coal and gold off their critical minerals lists. The European Union includes coal.

Massey University’s Professor Glenn Banks has spent decades studying and advising the Pacific’s mining sector, specialising in the socio-economic and cultural realities of large-scale extraction.

He has described New Zealand’s critical minerals list as poorly defined, saying some included minerals are critical to the mining industry – gold and coal – rather than essential to the economic wellbeing of the nation.

“There’s the stuff that has been identified as critical in terms of the green transition, your lithiums, your vanadiums and that kind of stuff.

Massey University Professor Glenn Banks.

“But if we shut down the gold sector here in New Zealand, it’s not going to be the end of the world for New Zealand in terms of mineral resources.

“It might cost us a little bit more to import wedding rings or jewellery and that kind of stuff, but that’s kind of the extent of it.”

Once you have the list, there is another critical step and that is to divide the 37 minerals into three groups: the ones we already mine, the ones we realistically could and the ones we’ll always have to import.

Where are the critical minerals in New Zealand?

The GNS interactive map identifying critical minerals in New Zealand.

Along with the list, GNS has also published an interactive map showing where these minerals have been detected across Aotearoa and at first glance, it looks like someone spilt a packet of M&Ms across the country.

You’ll see manganese in the Bay of Islands, copper on Aotea Great Barrier Island, nickel in Fiordland. Dots all over the place.

But look a little closer and it’s not a glittering treasure map of future mines. Most of these spots are tiny occurrences or one‑off identifications that have never been assessed for economic viability. Others are historical, likely a valuable strike a century ago but not necessarily today.

Take the scattering of manganese dots on Waiheke Island. A quick look at the history books shows they’re leftovers from a short‑lived manganese rush in the late 1800s. Check the New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals permit map and there are no exploratory or mining applications on the island.

It is the same story for Aotea Great Barrier Island and in the forested mountains of Fiordland – yes, there are traces of critical minerals there, but no one is coming to get them.

What the GNS map reveals is how markers are concentrated in the Coromandel, the West Coast of the South Island, and Otago.

When you add the west coast of the North Island from Taranaki up toward South Auckland, parts of Tasman and the central volcanic zone, this is where extraction might be possible.

Going by prospecting, exploration and mining applications or permits, it is where companies are looking.

They are the regions with minerals like titanium, vanadium, lithium, silica, antimony and rare earth elements. It is where geology, data and desire might just line up.

What critical minerals do we already produce?

Let’s set aggregate, coal and gold aside. We know we have plenty of quarries and coal and gold mining are well developed.

Mineral sand deposits on the South Island’s West Coast are a proven source, containing titanium, zirconium and rare earth elements alongside other non‑critical minerals.

Westland Mineral Sands (WMS) has an extraction operation north of Westport and is opening a second site near Hokitika.

The company filters out the heavier elements, producing a heavy mineral concentrate. This is transported to global markets, where further processing extracts the minerals.

Westland Mineral Sands uses the barge the Manahau to transfer its heavy mineral concentrate to transport vessels at sea.

WMS has applied for funding through the ring‑fenced $80m from the Government’s Regional Infrastructure Fund to build its own processing plant near its Westport mine.

WMS chief development officer Tim Chase says the project would allow the company to refine the mineral sands locally, rather than exporting the concentrate in its current form.

“By introducing value‑add processing, we can increase the value of our product by four to five times, create skilled regional jobs and build resilience and sustainability into the business in commodity markets that do change.”

Vanadium is prized for its ability to strengthen steel, resist corrosion and for its potential role in long‑duration energy storage.

In New Zealand, a vanadium-rich slag is produced during steel manufacturing at the Glenbrook Steel Mill.

BHP New Zealand Steel currently sends 12,000 tonnes each year to China, representing 10% of the world’s vanadium production. The slag is processed to be an additive in steel.

Aluminium is on the critical list and is produced in quantity – more than 300,000 tonnes each year – at the Tiwai Point smelter near Bluff, using imported alumina refined from bauxite ore mined in Australia.

Are we about to see more critical minerals mines in New Zealand?

While GNS has produced the map identifying where the minerals exist, it is now the work of private companies to assess whether digging them out is worth it – and that is a lot of work.

“It’s not tomorrow, you’re going to go and dig a hole,” Chambefort says.

“You need to assess the resource, the volume of this element that is in the crust; how many millions of tonnes and how many dollars’ worth will you be able to extract.

“You need to have the environmental assessment, the cost of the production, the cost of mining.

“It’s not because you have an anomaly [concentration of the mineral] that you will have a mine.”

She says the path from exploration permitting to an actual mine can take up to 20 years.

New Zealand’s fast-track system for accelerating approvals on large developments can help, but it is still not a guarantee, as recent decisions show.

In December, OceanaGold’s Waihī North extension won approval for its gold-mine extension near Waihī. This year, Trans-Tasman Resources’ application to mine iron-rich sands from the seabed in the South Taranaki Bight was declined.

Banks says you still need to show a proven resource, know how to extract it, have a bankable feasibility plan and have investors on board.

“If you’ve got all that sorted, and then you enter the fast-track process to get the regulatory consent you need.

“But it’s often the other way around. Investors are wary of the mining sector, because it’s a boom-and-bust [industry], and there’s a lot of cowboys out there.

“So, investors tend to wait until you’ve got the regulatory approvals, and you’re all good to go, then they’ll say, ‘Yep, we’ll come on board’. It’s always a balancing act for the sector.”

One company looking to mine a critical mineral that has so far been little tapped in New Zealand is Canadian-headquartered company Rua Gold.

Antimony is present in the quartz-vein deposits in the Reefton Goldfields. Early miners often treated antimony as a waste product, but today it carries real value, used in flame-retardant materials, batteries and energy storage, and as a metal hardener.

Rua Gold is undertaking exploratory drilling for antimony near Reefton.

It is also highly prized in defence, classified by the US Department of Defence as “war-critical”, thanks to its role in armour-piercing ammunition, explosives, flame-retardant military gear and advanced sensors and electronics.

Rua Gold chief executive Robert Eckford told the Herald that since the company began assessing antimony reserves, the price had risen from US$4000 ($6750) per tonne to US$40,000, making it economically viable.

There is also an obvious advantage for Rua Gold in that the company would be pulling the antimony out of the ground at the same time as gold, its primary product, using already established infrastructure.

Rua Gold chief executive Robert Eckford.

Eckford says Rua Gold is currently completing exploratory drilling at Auld Creek, and at the end of March will apply for it to be a fast-track eligible project.

“We know it’s in the ground, so step one is doing enough drilling where you have confidence that you’ve got a certain number of tonnes in the ground ... that resource right now looks at around 12,000 tonnes of antimony, which is around half a billion dollars of antimony in Reefton.”

After completing the permitting processes, the company is planning to start producing antimony by mid‑2028 – “which in mining terms is very quick, which is the attractiveness of New Zealand”.

Where do New Zealand’s critical minerals end up, and does it matter?

The need for New Zealand’s critical minerals list has been presented as part of a broader push to support clean technology, electronics, aviation and medical equipment. It is also framed as a way for New Zealand to help secure mineral supply chains and strengthen relationships with international partners.

It is well documented that global supply for many critical minerals is dominated by China, and establishing alternative sources has become a high priority for the United States and other Western countries.

Eckford is conscious of the precarious situation the West finds itself in and sees Rua Gold producing antimony for Western supply lines as part of that narrative.

From a global stability viewpoint, he says, a war could be won simply by controlling the supply chain, which is why agreements and declarations with the United States were necessary.

“I’m not saying that there’s a war about to break out, but war is taking a bit of a different image in this world, where it is now the supply chain war right here,” Eckford says.

“It’s about economic dominance and New Zealand is aligning with that Western side.

“We’re part of that story, fortunately.”

Banks points to a paper in ScienceDirect examining how defence and military use of critical minerals is driving global demand – not the transition to green energy or digital technologies.

The paper highlights that defence industries – which produce weapons, munitions, jets and so forth – use substantial proportions of several high‑value minerals: 18% of antimony, 33% of chromium, 11% of cobalt, and 5-10% of copper. All of these minerals sit in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s “potential to be produced in New Zealand” category.

“This is the sort of stuff that we’re just not talking about,” Banks notes.

“The neon flashing light ‘critical minerals’ goes off, let’s get into this big time, without necessarily thinking of it more critically about: why are we getting involved in this?

“And what’s in it for us? But also, where are these things ending up?”

Mike Scott is an award-winning visual journalist with more than two decades of experience telling stories across multiple media platforms.

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