This report and accompany factsheets outline the case for Australia to recognise bauxite, alumina and aluminium on its Critical Minerals list in order to help secure Australia’s advantage in an uncertain geopolitcal world.
Australia has a strategic sovereign capability advantage that few countries possess: a complete aluminium value chain extending from bauxite mining and alumina refining through to primary aluminium production and downstream manufacturing. That capability should be recognised by adding bauxite, alumina and aluminium to Australia’s Critical Minerals List.
Australia’s Critical Minerals List is intended to identify minerals that are essential to modern technologies, economies or national security, for which Australia has geological potential and international partner demand, and whose supply chains are vulnerable to disruption. This report sets out the reasons why Australia should join key strategic partners in recognising the criticality of these commodities. Bauxite, alumina and aluminium comprehensively meet the existing criteria for listing, have an increasingly important role in defence, and the cost to the nation of losing this capability will be both unbearably high and irreversible – economically and strategically.
For bauxite, alumina and aluminium the case is not based on scarcity. Aluminium is essential to national security, modern economies, advanced manufacturing and clean energy. With global production highly concentrated and processing capacity increasingly shaped by a combination of industrial policy and geopolitical competition, Australia should align with its major strategic partners which recognise aluminium, bauxite and the broader value chain as critical.
Australia does not need to create this capability. It needs to recognise, retain and grow it.
Read
Securing Australia’s Aluminium Advantage Report
Bauxite, Alumina and Aluminium as Critical Minerals Factsheet
