The project will process up to 27mn tonnes of material and produce up to 400,000 tonnes of critical mineral ore each year. The extracted material is said to provide titanium-bearing minerals such as rutile, leucoxene and ilmenite, as well as premium zircon. The deposit also reportedly contains rare earth elements, including monazite and xenotime – used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, telecommunications and medical devices.

The Copi project is the second critical minerals mining development approved by the Minns Labour government in four months, following the Aeris Resources Constellation project for copper ore. The project was also recognised at the 2025 Quad leaders’ summit, where the US, Japan, India and Australia designated it as a supply chain asset and announced financing from the US Export-Import Bank (EXIM).

‘Receiving NSW development approval for the Copi project is a defining moment for RZ Resources, for the Wentworth community and for Australia’s critical minerals sector,’ stated David Fraser, Founder and Executive Chairman of RZ Resources. He added that the deposit represents an ‘opportunity that will help Australia and its allies secure supply chains for the materials which underpin energy, manufacturing and defence’.

Government officials stated that the approval aligns with broader state policies targeting the extraction of critical elements. ‘NSW is home to some of the world’s most significant critical mineral deposits and we are focused on turning that potential into long-term investment and industry growth,’ said NSW Minister for Natural Resources Courtney Houssos, noting that the state contains 21 of the 31 minerals identified on Australia’s national critical minerals list.

NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully stated that the development ‘will help secure the supply of critical minerals to help power clean energy, telecommunications and medical device technologies while supporting hundreds of jobs in NSW’s Far West’.

A growing divide

The expansion of critical mineral assets in Australia illustrates a growing divide between where minerals are extracted and the nationality of the entities that own them. For example, data from Wood Mackenzie shows that while African geography will account for 13% of global lithium extraction by 2030, corporations based in African nations are expected to own only 1% of total output.

‘With few exceptions, Africa’s lithium growth has been financed by Chinese capital,’ Pedersen stated, highlighting structural issues related to ‘ownership, value capture and long-term supply chain influence’.

Wood Mackenzie also identified a structural constraint, as brine-based lithium extraction methods require longer timeframes and more complex scaling processes compared to the rapid expansion seen in hard-rock spodumene and lepidolite mining operations elsewhere.

Analysis from Wood Mackenzie shows that Chinese corporations are on track to control 39% of global lithium extraction by 2030, up from approximately one-third in 2020. ‘Lithium production and lithium ownership are increasingly diverging, and it is changing the global critical mineral supply chains,’ stated Allan Pedersen, Research Director for Energy Transition and Battery Materials at Wood Mackenzie. ‘While production growth is becoming more geographically diverse, ownership remains concentrated among a relatively small group of companies, mostly led by China.’

The regional distribution of global mineral supply is expected to change by 2030, particularly in established mining regions such as Australia. In 2020, Australia accounted for 43% of global lithium extraction, but Wood Mackenzie forecasts this will fall to 25% by 2030 due to faster growth in other countries. This market share adjustment is said to be primarily driven by expanded extraction operations in Africa.

New lower cost lithium extraction process

Beyond changes in regional ownership, industrial mining processing requirements are also driving international technical research into extraction costs and infrastructure changes. Researchers at the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an alternative process for extracting battery-grade lithium from hard-rock spodumene minerals. The researchers have developed a closed-loop extraction process that operates at room temperature to break down the rock matrix. This method uses a liquid chemical reagent mixture consisting of water and ammonium fluoride to dissolve the silica components first.

The research team estimates that the closed-loop process reduces processing costs by half compared to traditional high-temperature hard-rock lithium extraction methods (baking at 1,000°C, followed by chemical leaching). This cost reduction is projected to make hard-rock processing cost-competitive with lithium extraction from traditional brine-water evaporation operations.

‘Hard rock is abundant; you can find it everywhere. But most hard rock refining is done in China. Our central thesis is to enable regional production,’ explained Camden Hunt, former Project Manager at MIT’s Centre for Electrification and Decarbonisation of Industry and co-author of the study.

‘We believe this approach is the lowest-energy, lowest-cost way of getting lithium not only out of hard rock, but period,’ stated Yet-Ming Chiang, co-author of the study and Kyocera Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. ‘That’s what’s motivating us to scale this. It will enable the energy transition through batteries that use lithium.’

Critical mineral production in 2025, along with figures for some 10 other key energy commodities, will be published on 30 July in the Energy Institute 's Statistical Review of World Energy. Sign up to receive updates via https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review