Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 2025 Mineral Exploration

The early 2020s were marked by economic turbulence, starting amid COVID-19 lockdowns and a slowing world economy. In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacted global supply and contributed to rising inflation and higher energy prices. In 2023, China announced export controls on graphite and rare earth extraction and separation technologies. This was followed in 2024 by export bans to the United States on materials for semiconductors namely, antimony, gallium and germanium. Also in 2024, the Trump administration secured a second term and introduced sweeping trade tariffs, which were followed by global market uncertainty and increased export controls by China on a range of critical minerals. These events and ongoing conflicts around the world have highlighted risks to energy and defence security, driving price volatility and resource exploration trends.

While overall demand for new sources of raw materials remained relatively strong in 2024, total spending on exploration in Australia subsided. After a series of year-on- year increases, in 2023, exploration expenditure reached an all-time record of $4,261 million. In 2024, spending on mineral exploration moderated in comparison and declined by 7% to $3,949 million (Figure 3).

This contraction was seen across both brownfield and greenfield projects (Figure 4). Exploration expenditure around existing deposits (brownfield) was down 3% from $2,922 million in 2023 to $2,823 million in 2024. Likewise, metres drilled at brownfield deposits fell by 9% from 7,823,900 m to 7,129,600 m. The search for new mineral deposits in frontier regions (greenfield) was down 16% from $1,338 million in 2023 to $1,126 million in 2024, accompanied by an 18% fall in metres drilled from 2,995,400 m to 2,463,400 m.

Despite the overall decline in exploration expenditure, commodity market performance was mixed. Quarterly reports on mineral exploration data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics¹⁸ show that interest in iron ore and energy commodities, namely uranium and coal, grew to the highest levels in more than a decade (Figure 5). Spending on iron ore exploration, for example, increased by 11% to $770 million and uranium exploration expenditure was up by 30% from $55 million in 2023, to $71 million in 2024 (Figure 3).

These increases in exploration expenditure helped to balance reductions in other commodities, with declines in exploration expenditure for gold (down 4%), copper (down 13%), nickel-cobalt (down 36%), silver-lead-zinc (down 26%) and ‘other minerals’, a category that includes many critical minerals, (down 15%; Figure 5).

Despite the overall drop in exploration expenditure in 2024, gold remained the most explored for commodity (Figure 5), accounting for 30% ($1,187 million) of all mineral exploration expenditure, as investors sought safety in gold exposure amid global uncertainty. Iron ore remained a significant, second-place, exploration target and, in third place, ‘other minerals’ also remained highly sought after, despite the previously mentioned spending declines. The ongoing interest in critical minerals is underpinned by structural demand growth, largely driven by the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy.

Geographically, the 2024 reduction in exploration expenditure was seen throughout all Australian states and territories. The largest falls were in Victoria (down 30% to $105 million), the Northern Territory (down 23% to $176 million) and New South Wales (down 22% to $280 million; Figure 6). Despite these falls, Western Australia remained the powerhouse of Australian exploration, accounting for 64% of national exploration expenditure in 2024, followed by Queensland with 14% ($566 million) and New South Wales with 7% ($280 million).

Despite reduced overall expenditure in 2024, Australia remains one of the most attractive destinations in the world for mineral exploration, reflecting Australia’s vast resource endowment, strong mining industry, mature regulatory regime and supportive government investment, such as the 35-year Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity initiative. This initiative will play a key role in unlocking the national potential for a broad range of the resources critical to the net zero transition, supporting a strong Australian resources sector.