An Australian company has announced plans to open the only commercial fluorite mine in the country, following the recent addition of the little-known resource to the national critical minerals list.
Fluorite is used industrially in steel, aluminium and chemical manufacturing, and in emerging sectors including next-generation lithium-ion batteries and solar cells.
Titanium and vanadium miner Tivan advised shareholders of its intention to progress a fluorite project in Western Australia’s Kimberley region in an announcement to the ASX.
Tivan chief executive Grant Wilson said the decision to progress the mine, located south-west of Kununurra, came following the federal government’s addition of fluorite to Australia’s critical minerals list in December.
“That list effectively creates eligibility for fluorite projects in Australia,” he said.
“And this stuff is now absolutely vital for the energy transition, and it’s in strong demand.”
And it’s demand Mr Wilson only sees increasing.
“There is a strong supply-demand imbalance forecast to emerge, particularly from about 2025 in … acid-grade fluorspar, the material that’s going into these next generation EV batteries,” he said.
“China… is deficient in reserves and if they continue to consume fluorspar at the rate that they are, they will run out in about 10 years, which is remarkable.”
Fluorite production currently only occurs in China, Mongolia, Mexico and South Africa.
Tivan will now conduct a project feasibility study “to assess the technical and economic feasibility of a mining and processing operation targeting the high-grade component of the Kimberley deposit,” the ASX announcement read.
Adjusted critical minerals list
When Neil Van Drunen, acting chief executive of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), saw fluorite had been added to the Australian critical minerals list in late 2023, he was unaware of its significance.
“To be completely honest, I had to dig into my periodic table to find it,” he said.
“AMEC was expecting nickel and copper to be included to the critical minerals list, but they included fluoride and arsenic.
“We then had a conversation with the minister’s office and found it is critical in the sense that it is in desperately short supply and Australia doesn’t have any fluorite mines at the moment.”
Mr Van Drunen said many mining companies were taking stock of their own deposits to see if they could make opportunistic decisions like Tivan.
“I know a lot of companies went back to their tenements and ran the numbers, because there’s an obvious advantage to mining a critical mineral in Australia,” he said.
As big as lithium?
With the lithium market struggling, University of Western Australia Resource Economics Professor Alan Trench said while some might hope fluorite would offer the next minerals boom, it wasn’t that simple.
“I wouldn’t say it will ever become as big as lithium,” Professor Trench said.
“Western Australia has been a fantastic success story in ramping up to almost half the world’s production of lithium and we’ve probably ramped up a bit too much — and that’s what’s driven the prices down recently.
“Fluorite is more of a niche market that wouldn’t grow to the same size of lithium potential, but it’s a perfectly good niche industrial minerals market.”
Get our local newsletter, delivered free each Tuesday
