Resources Minister Shane Jones. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
The government has released a draft list of 35 minerals it considers essential to the economy.
The list, released for consultation on Sunday, is the first of its kind for New Zealand and will form part of its mineral strategy which maps the potential and practicality of mining.
It highlights rare elements and extractable resources New Zealand has reserves of, and which meet certain requirements: that the minerals are useful for national security or technology; or in demand from trading partners and at risk of supply disruption either locally or internationally to make the list.
In May, the government released a draft strategy for mineral mining, aiming to double the sector's export value to $2 billion by 2035.
"The draft list covers a range of minerals with many different applications within our economy and considers minerals that are needed internationally where New Zealand may be able to contribute to supply," Resources Minister Shane Jones said.
"It also considers risks to domestic and international supply chains, and where there is a need to build more supply resilience."
New Zealand has never developed a comprehensive picture of its minerals needs and weaknesses, Jones said, and he was correcting this with the creation of the Critical Minerals List. The US, Australia and other jurisdictions already had their own.
He told RNZ the list was for minerals that New Zealand had reserves of, and would make it easier to explain to potential investors and trading partners the opportunities in New Zealand.
"This is what New Zealand has to offer. It makes it easier for potential investors, it makes it easier for the scientific community and it makes it easier for the policy workers to work in tandem.
"A nation like New Zealand needs a critical minerals list to establish what it is that we have, that can boost not only our economic resilience but our security resilience."
He told Morning Report premium and quality information about what New Zealand has was important.
"I'm not walking away from the fact that there is still a lot of nervousness within certain parts of New Zealand as to opening up the mineral sector but look, every economic arrow in the quiver has to hit a target for us and minerals are an area where we've under done it and subject to robust consent processes, why should we continually say we're going to import everything if we've got it here and we can turn it into an export industry."
Coal and gold are not on the list. Jones said they were not in short supply in Australasia and he did not want anyone to feel they had been "written out of the script".
"There are trade offs to be made. We touch a tiny fraction of the conservation estate. Less than 1 percent is dedicated to coal mining and it's coal that generates not only jobs but incredibly valuable export earnings.
"So I think we should step away from the apocryphal language and expect that there are trade offs to be made and let science, economic rationalism and technology guard those decisions."
Environmental advocates fear the government's new wishlist could lead to mining on conservation land.
Forest and Bird spokesperson Richard Capie said it was a worrying sign, as many of those minerals will be in conservation areas.
"It's one thing to release a list of minerals, it's another to be honest with New Zealanders about where they are and the amount of damage, or what would be at stake, in order to extract them," he said.
"If you think about where Nickel and Cobalt is, most of the high potential area outside of the existing mining bans is particularly in land ... that includes Mount Richmond Forest Park, Red Hills, and areas that are outside of conservation land but are in catchments which drain into the Nelson-Richmond area."
Capie said it seemed the government was eager to build mines throughout New Zealand, which could seriously damage the environment.
He said the proposed changes to the Resource Management Act and the new Fast-track legislation were getting rid of rules which were in place to protect the environment when mines were brought in.
"It's not clear at this stage how that list would be applied, what they've intended to do is set out a range of minerals which they've identified as being potentially of value or importance to the New Zealand economy both domestically for things like renewable energy and the like, but also as exports," he said.
"The right mine in the right place is something I think we already have resource management systems in place to enable that to happen and indeed it does happen around the country. Unfortunately what we're seeing is that under Fast Track, where mines have been proposed in places where they've been turned down by our highest courts, by the environmental protection agency, by the Environment Court, by the Supreme Court, the Fast-track is being designed in such a way that it will let those activities now take place in areas where mining just shouldn't be happening.
"The kind of rhetoric we're hearing about a new kind of gold rush is deeply irresponsible, especially when it's backed up with horrific legislation like Fast-Track which overrides environmental protections and locks communities out from having any say about what's been planned in their backyard."
Jones told RNZ it was possible New Zealand had the third-highest deposit of vanadium - after Russia and China.
"We just have the small task to overcome of extracting it from the bed of the sea, otherwise known as the ironsands off the coast of Taranaki. That matter will lie with other statutory processes beyond this list.
"We're not going to allow the minerals sector to be drowned out by voices that sadly are not driven by science, but they're driven by hysteria and unscientific fears. I realise it's a controversial thing to advance the minerals agenda but that's what we were elected to achieve and that's what I am endeavouring to deliver."
Capie, however, said the debate about seabed mining off Taranaki had been about how destructive it was to the local marine environment.
"You might have the minister champing at the bit to just destroy that seabed, but you've also got local community, you've got fishing industry and you've got the offshore wind industries all saying this is a horrific and bad idea."
Capie said the value of things like the primary sector and tourism sector were built on New Zealand's environment, and so its value vastly outstripped the value of the mining industry.
"Yet we seem to be placing those things materially at risk with the changes that we're making, it just doesn't make sense ... the idea that it's an economic imperative actually doesn't look at the other side of the ledger"
Jones, however, argued New Zealand needed access to the minerals and it was better to mine it in New Zealand than import it from overseas.
"To my naysayers, we either are going to import rare and critical minerals or have a go at extracting them, developing them, and selling them ourselves, and I'm all about using our own natural endowment rather than relying on other countries to generate minerals that we have to buy."
Consultation will last for three weeks, through to the 10th of October.
Critical minerals on the draft list, and their key identified uses
- Aggregate and sand Roading and construction
- Aluminium Packaging, automotive, aerospace, defence
- Antimony Defence applications, EVs and medical
- Arsenic Treatment of wood and electronics including semiconductors
- Beryllium Aerospace parts
- Bismuth Data storage
- Boron Permanent magnets, electronics, PV cells
- Caesium Cancer treatments, electronics and optics, space and PV cells
- Chromium Key alloying element in steels
- Cobalt Battery and energy storage applications, steel alloys
- Copper Power transmission, electronics and EVs
- Fluorspar Used in aluminium production, insulating foams, refrigerants and steel
- Gallium Photovoltaic (PV) cells (also called solar cells), electronics (semiconductors)
- Germanium Electronics (semiconductors)
- Graphite Battery and energy storage applications
- Indium Electronics, solders, batteries, photovoltaic (PV) cells (also called solar cells), bearings
- Magnesium Lightweight alloys
- Manganese Used in steels, aluminium alloys, batteries, catalysts, glass, fertilisers and electronics
- Molybdenum Common alloying element for steels and high temp alloys
- Nickel Alloying in steel, stainless steel, batteries and energy storage applications
- Niobium High-temperature superalloys
- Phosphate Agriculture fertilisers, battery and energy storage applications
- Platinum Group Metals Catalysts, hydrogen fuel cells, EVs, electronics and communications
- Potassium (Potash) Agriculture fertilisers
- Rare Earth Elements Permanent magnets, glass polishing, ceramics, metal alloys, LEDs, lasers
- Rubidium Medical and electronics
- Selenium Agricultural uses as well as photovoltaic (PV) cells (also called solar cells) and electronics
- Silicon Glass, casting sand, nanomaterials and electronics
- Strontium Magnets, alloys and paints
- Tellurium Photovoltaic (PV) cells (also called solar cells), electronics
- Titanium Aerospace parts, medical implants
- Tungsten Drilling, mining, cutting
- Vanadium Steel and titanium alloys, catalysts, magnets, coatings, battery and energy storage systems
- Zinc Anodising and corrosion protection
- Zirconium Fuel cells, auto catalysts, bearings