FUEL

Coal

Coal was Australia's first export in 1799 and it tops Australia's list of export earners in 2001. Australia is the world's largest exporter of black coal and there is no end in sight to the industry's growth.

In total, 324 million tonnes of black and brown coal was produced in Australia in 2000-01 and the growth in volume is forecast to continue at about 3.5 per cent a year. Domestically Australia uses 130 million tonnes of coal a year—mostly for electricity generation— but the majority of coal, around 70 per cent, is exported.

Australia's coal industry has many natural advantages: good quality coal (good coking properties with a low sulfur content managing between 0.3 per cent and 0.8 per cent and many deposits are low in phosphorus); readily accessible deposits; close proximity to ports and Asian markets; and established infrastructure.

Australian coal companies produce a wide range of coals. Producers vary product specifications by selective mining, blending or processing of thermal or steaming coal to metallurgical or coking coals.

Although coal is produced Australia-wide, most of Australia's major coal producers, such as BHP Billiton, MIM and Rio Tinto rely heavily on export sales from deposits in Queensland and New South Wales.

Japan is Australia's leading coal export customer. It takes over 45 per cent of Australia's coking and steaming coal exports. The steady development of Japanese industry has been a driving factor in the growth of Australia's export coal trade. Other Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan and India take 33 per cent of Australia's export, while
16 per cent goes to Europe. The balance is mainly shipped to the Middle East and South America.

BHP Billiton is one of Australia's, and the world's, largest coal producers. Annual shipments from its operations in Queensland and New South Wales represent about a third of all Australia's coal exports and about a fifth of the world's seaborne trade in coking coal.

MIM entered Australia's export coal market in a big way in the early 1980s with 75 per cent participation in the Newlands-Collinsville-Abbot Point (NCA) project in Queensland's Bowen Basin.

Newlands, which began production in 1983, was generating an average of 7 million tonnes of steaming coal by 2001 from open-cut and underground longwall operations. Over 70 per cent of Australian coal comes from open-cut mines. Newlands coal is particularly suitable for use as pulverised fuel in power stations, cement kilns and specialised boilers.

Collinsville, which has been in production since 1919, has the capacity to produce up to 4 million tonnes a year of export steaming and coking coal from open-cut and continuous highwall mine operations. Coal from Newlands and Collinsville is railed to dedicated coal handling port facilities at Abbot point, about 20 kilometres north of Bowen.

Coal mining is one of Rio Tinto's many Australian activities. The company produces around a quarter of Australia's total coal output from mines in Queensland and New South Wales.

In Queensland it operates through its subsidiary, Pacific Coal, which has interests in the Blair Athol and Tarong open-cut steaming coal mines and the Kestrel underground coking coal operation. In New South Wales Rio Tinto operates through CAN, a merger arrangement with Coal & Allied industries. Its main interests are its participation in Coal & Allied mines, mostly in the Hunter Valley.

The Australian coal industry has the capacity to expand to meet increasing world demand for coal. New mines, covering a range of thermal and metallurgical coals, are currently under development.
 

Oil and Natural Gas

Until the mid -1960s, Australia imported 100 per cent of its petroleum, natural gas was virtually unknown and reticulated gas came from coal. New exploration and recovery techniques, however, led to the discovery of energy resources in many parts of Australia by the middle of the 20th century.

In 2002, petroleum and gas are Australia's most valuable commodities. Crude oil reached record levels of 
production in 2000-01. Most of this production comes from the maturing Bass Strait fields and new supplies from the North West Shelf.

BHP Billiton is Australia's largest oil producer. A partnership between BHP and Esso operates 20 offshore producing wells in the Gippsland Basin in Bass Strait. The Gippsland Basin oil and gas fields came into production in 1970 and for a time were responsible for more than 90 per cent of Australia's crude oil production. Today they provide 27 per cent of Australia's crude oil production and around 20 per cent of national gas sales. The joint venture's production is projected to increase 80 per cent by 2004 with revenue from gas production overtaking revenue from crude oil production.

Australia's biggest gas development is the North West Shelf project off the coast of Western Australia. The state is the nation's leading producer of oil and liquid fuels condensed from natural gas and accounts for almost 70 per cent of national crude oil production and 60 per cent of natural gas.

Western Australia has over three-quarters of the identified natural gas resources in Australia in 38 offshore and onshore producing fields. The Carnarvon Basin (off the Pilbara coast) has 27 fields, the Canning Basin (in the Kimberleys) has five, the Perth Basin (around the town of Geraldton) has four and the Bonaparte Basin (off the far north coast of the state) has two.

BHP Billiton has invested $12 billion in the North West Shelf, mostly in natural gas development, but also in crude oil. Other companies with interests in the region include Apache Energy, ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, Orion Energy, Santos, Shell, Tap Oil, Wandoo Petroleum and Woodside Petroleum.

Woodside Petroleum is a well-known oil and gas success story. Formed in 1954 as Woodside (Lakes Entrance) Oil NL to look for oil in Victoria's Gippsland region, it shifted its attention to sedimentary basins off Western Australia's north-western coast, in the area destined to become known as the North West Shelf. In association with a range of partners, Woodside found success in the early 1970s with the discoveries of gas fields at North Rankin, Goodwyn and Angel, 130 kilometres off the Pilbara coast. The State Energy Commission of Western Australia built a 1,788-kilometre gas pipeline from Dampier to Perth and beyond, and in 1984 North West Shelf gas began to replace other forms of energy in Western Australia.

A second major pipeline, the 1,380-kilometre Goldfields Gas Pipeline completed in 1996, supplies North West Shelf gas to the iron ore industries in the Pilbara and to the Kalgoorlie and Kambalda areas. Construction of these pipelines has also enabled a wide range of oil-fired power stations to be replaced with more economical and environmentally friendly gas-fired stations.

An area of active oil exploration and development is the Timor Gap region off Australia's north coast. The major investors in the region include Phillips Petroleum, BHP Billiton, Santos, Woodside and Shell Australia.

Australia's proven gas reserves have more than doubled since 1998 and production is expected to increase over the coming decades.

Analysts predict that gas will become Australia's fastest-growing energy source. Natural gas is contributing a growing share of the domestic primary energy market, displacing other energy sources, particularly diesel, fuel oil and coal. It is a competitively priced, clean energy source and gas market reforms have facilitated the penetration of gas into the primary energy market.

Santos found the Gidgealpa gas field in 1963 and the Moomba gas field in South Australia in 1966. Santos' largest onshore facility is its integrated operation linking the Cooper and Eromanga Basins in South Australia and Queensland. From there, Santos gas flows to Adelaide, Sydney, Canberra, Albury (on the New South Wales and Victoria border where it connects with the Victorian pipeline system) and Brisbane, Gladstone and Mount Isa in Queensland.

The availability of natural gas to many mining centres has changed the economics of energy supply and minerals processing making these operations more economical.

For example, gas is piped to the WMC phosphate deposits at Duchess, south of Mount Isa in Queensland, for use in converting phosphates to fertiliser. Santos also pipes ethane to Sydney to become feedstock for the Qenos petrochemical plant at Botany. Qenos uses oil and gas feedstock from Bass Strait and the Moomba Basin to produce the polymers ethylene and polyethylene to be used in plastic bags, packaging films, milk bottles and cartons, detergent bottles, pipes and water tanks.

The connection between Moomba and Sydney continues to be made economically attractive by the fact that New South Wales, alone among Australia's mainland states, has no known economically viable sources of natural gas or petroleum within its borders.

Santos also has interests in the Amadeus Basin in the south of the Northern Territory where it operates the Mereenie oil and gas field. It pipes gas from these fields to Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Darwin, enabling these centres to generate electric power from gas instead of oil.

Overseas markets for liquid natural gas (LNG), natural gas chilled for economical transport in liquid form, present major opportunities for Australia. Exports of LNG from the North West Shelf began in 1989 under 20-year contracts with eight power and gas utilities in Japan. Australia accounts for over 8 per cent of world LNG trade and is ranked fourth among the 11 exporting countries.

Sales of LNG from the North West Shelf are running at nearly 8 million tonnes a year. The six partners in the LNG project initiated the construction of a fourth LNG train in 2001. At 4.2 million tonnes per year, it would be the largest in the world. The $1.6 billion expansion will also include a pipeline to shore and a ninth LNG carrier. The total capacity for the North West Shelf would be raised to 12 million tonnes per year.

However, despite significant developments on Australia's North West Shelf and the developing Timor Sea regions, Australia's underwater continental shelf remains under-explored and there is strong potential for significant oil and gas discoveries to be made.
 
 

Metallurgical

Copper

Australia is not one of the largest copper producers  but it is a significant exporter. Mine, smelter and refined production has increased substantially.

Japan has always been the dominant  market for Australia copper ores and concentrates. 

Uranium

Australia contains almost one third of the reasonably assured resources of uranium in the western world.  The major deposits are in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia.  Total production of uranium concentrate (U308) is about 2800 tones a year from two mines, Ranger in the Northern Territory and the Olympic Dam in South Australia.  A third mine, Nabarlek in the Northern Territory, ceased mining in 1990.  The present policy of the Australian Government does not permit production from other sources. 

Nickel

Australia is one of the world's major nickel producers and exports most of its output to Europe, Japan and the United States. Australia's exports of nickel totalled $2 billion in 2000-01.

Although nickel resources exist throughout Australia, all Australia's working nickel mines are in the state of Western Australia. During the 'nickel boom' of the 1960s, the nation's nickel industry was pioneered by WMC, which began mining sulphide ores at Kambalda in 1967. In 1972 WMC began metallic nickel production at its refinery in Kalgoorlie. Today WMC has nickel operations at Kambalda, Kalgoorlie, Leinster, Mount Keith and Kwinana in Western Australia and is the world's third largest nickel producer.

Forrestania Nickel Mines also operates in Western Australia. It is owned by interests associated with the Finnish company Outokumpu. The nickel ore it mines at Forrestania is exported to Finland.

In the 1990s, new entrants to the industry began to work laterilic nickel deposits, employing pioneering technology. Prominent among the new entrants was Anaconda Nickel Limited, which established a major mine and treatment plant at Murrin Murrin, about 300 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie.

A nickel refinery operates at Yabulu in Queensland. Nickel mining in the state ceased in 1992 but the refinery uses ore imported from New Caledonia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Nickel exploration is ongoing however and there is the possibility of the Marlborough deposit, near Rockhampton in Queensland, being developed in the near future by Preston Resources.

Tin

Renison bell in western Tasmania is the site of one of the world's largest underground tin mines. Situated on the mineral rich west coast of Tasmania, it accounts for 90 per cent of Australia's tin output, 4 per cent of total world production and 25 per cent of the global tin concentrate market.

Alluvial tin was first discovered in the area in 1890 and the existing ore body was discovered in the late 1950s. The mine, owned by Murchison United, produces 750,000 tonnes of ore per annum and has a capacity of 1 million tonnes. The reserve occurs over a strike length of 1.8 kilometres and a depth of 900 metres.

An intricate network of 60 kilometres of tunnels produces over a dozen ore bodies which ensures a suitable blend for the processing plant. A concentration process leaves a product containing 50 to 60 per cent tin, which is then transported to the northern port of Burnie for shipment to smelters in Malaysia and Thailand.

Australia's other major tin producer is the Sons of Gwalia open-cut mine al Greenbushes in Western Australia, where tin is a by-product of tantalum mining. Tin was first discovered here in 1888.

This mine has the only tin smelter in Western Australia and the largest tin smelter in Australia. Most of the tin - about 900 tonnes in 2000-01 - is sold overseas lo be used in the alloy, solder and bearing industries.

During 2000-01, Australia exported tin ore and concentrates valued at $75 million to Malaysia and Thailand. Exports of refined tin to Malaysia, Thailand, the United States and other countries brought export income of $1 million.
 

Uranium

Australia has the world's largest reserves of low-cost uranium - 29 per cent of the world's total - and three of the world's top ten uranium mines. In 2000-01 Australia exported a record 9,700 tonnes of uranium oxide, earning 
$497 million.

Australia's uranium exports are currently used exclusively for generating electricity, supplying power for about 45 million people and saving the emission of over 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. All exports of Australian uranium are subject to stringent safeguards that ensure none of the material is diverted from peaceful uses.

Virtually all of this uranium came from only two mines: Ranger in the Northern Territory and Olympic Darn in South Australia. Production in 2000-01 for these two mines was around 9,500 tonnes. Total sales of uranium to date are $3.8 billion.

Ranger is the country's major uranium producer, supplying around 8 per cent of the Western world's uranium demand to Europe, Asia and North America.

The Olympic Dam copper-uranium-gold-silver deposit, owned and operated by WMC, contains the world's largest known deposit of uranium. The uranium occurs about 350 metres below the surface and is worked by large-scale underground mining.

Heathgate Resources opened a third uranium mine, the Beverley project in South Australia in 2001. Il has an 
annual production rate of 1,000 tonnes per annum. The Beverley project is unique because it is the first commercially operated mine to use the water-based in-situ leach mining method which is more environmentally friendly.

Iron Ore

With huge reserves of iron ore, Australia is the world's largest iron ore exporter and supplies one-eighth of the world's entire iron ore needs. As a producer, Australia ranks second after Brazil.

Australia's economic demonstrated resources of iron ore - those that have been sufficiently tested by drilling and that could be economically extracted at current prices with existing technology - total over 13 billion tonnes. Only Russia and Ukraine have more.

Although iron ore resources occur in all Australian states and territories, almost 95 per cent of the 31 billion tonnes of identified resources are in Western Australia, and about 90 per cent of this is in the Pilbara's Hamersley Province.

All the major Australian iron ore mines are open-cut. In the Pilbara, the ore is hauled from the working faces to crushing and screening plants in huge trucks that can carry up to 230 tonnes in one load. It then travels to port sites in 2.5-kilometre-long trains that consist of up to three locomotives and 250 wagons loaded with over 25,000 tonnes of ore. At the port sites, the ore is subjected to further treatment and blending to meet export specifications.

The Pilbara mines are owned and operated by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. Rio Tinto subsidiary Hamersley Iron operates the Mount Tom Price, Brockman No. 2 Detritals, Paraburdoo, Channar, Marandoo and Yandicoogina mines. Their output is railed to Dampier for blending and rescreening before export. Rio Tinto also operates and owns 53 per cent of the Robe River Joint Venture, widely regarded as the world's most cost-effective and reliable supplier of consistent quality iron ore.

BHP Billiton manages the Newman Joint Venture, the Yandi Joint Venture and the Mount Goldsworthy Joint Venture. It also owns the Jimblebar mine. Ore from all these is railed to Port Hedland in Western Australia for export.

Joint venture partners have varying minority interests in the projects. Most of the joint venturers with Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton in these operations are Japanese trading companies, including Mitsui, Nippon Steel, Sumitomo Metal and Itochu. Rio Tinto also has a Chinese joint venture partner (Chinese Metallurgical Import and Export Corporation) for the Channar mine in Western Australia.

Processes such as concentration, blending and beneficiation add value to the ore. Concentration upgrades the iron content by removing impurities. Blending involves mixing ores from different areas. A typical export blend contains over 60 per cent iron. Beneficiation involves improving the physical properties of the product as blast furnace feed. As well as ensuring that customer requirements are met, these processes enable the producers to upgrade low-grade ores and so extend the life of the total resource.

In South Australia, BHP Billiton mines iron ore at Iron Duke in the Middleback Ranges for use in iron and steel making at Whyalla.

Australia's major markets for iron ore from Western Australia are Japan, China, South Korea and Western Europe.
 

Magnesium

Magnesium metal is in incresing demand, mostly for use in cars. The metal's lightweight qualities means lower fuel consumption and reduced emissions. In addition its magnetic shielding properties are a key feature which make it attractive for use in electronics, computers, mobile phones and aerospace components and its alloys can be readily recycled.

Predictions for strong growth in demand for magnesium metal have resulted in feasibility studies being undertaken.

One of the world's largest known cryptocrystalline magnesite deposits has been found at Kunawarara, north-west of Rockhampton in Queensland. This find is significant because magnesite has the highest magnesium content at 28 per cent. The site is even more appealing in that there are only 4 metres of overburden, allowing the deposit to be worked by the economical open-cut method.

Australian Magnesium Corporation Limited (AMC) began working the magnesite deposits at Kunawarara by concentrating on the production of magnesia (magnesium oxide) for use in refractory brick making, animal food supplements, fertilisers, paints, paper and plastics.

In 1991 the Federal government put $20 million towards development of the AMC/CSIRO magnesium metal production technology known as the AM Process. In 1997, AMC, Normandy Mining and the United States' Ford Motor Company committed $48 million to the project. Ford subsequently signed a 10-year sales agreement with AMC. In 2000, AMC received local, state and federal environment and planning approvals for the 97,000-tonnes- per-annum magnesium metal plant at Stanwell in Queensland, with space to expand to 360,000 tonnes per annum. The government announced the provision of a further $50 million towards commercialisation of the AM Process technology and a guarantor for a $100 million loan for the project. The Queensland government has also committed $150 million to the Stanwell Energy Park.

The project has begun with a 1,500-tonnes-a-year demonstration pilot plant. The plant uses the chemical AM Process to minimise and recycle effluents and operate at lower temperatures, thus using less energy.

Other magnesium projects include the South Australian Magnesium Metal Project (SAMAG) - wholly owned by Pima Mining NL - which proposes to mine magnesite deposits in the Willouran Ranges in South Australia's north and to produce magnesium metal and alloys in a proposed production facility at Port Pirie. The capital value of the project is estimated at $750 million. The proposed initial annual capacity is 65,000 tonnes in 2004, increasing to 100,000 tonnes and the direct and indirect employment of an estimated 1,200 workers.

In the Northern Territory, Mount Grace Resources is set to become Australia's first magnesium producer, with a mine and 12,500 tonnes-per-annum metal production plant at Batchelor, south of Darwin. The company expects to be in production by 2003. Plans include expansion to 25,000 tonnes-per-annum capacity in 2005 and 50,000 tonnes-per-annum in 2007.

In Western Australia, Anaconda is developing a magnesium project at Murrin Murrin and Pilbara Magnesium Metal Associates is also developing a mine in the state.

In New South Wales, Golden Triangle Resources is developing the Woodsreef Magnesium Project and Tasmania has magnesite deposits in the environmentally sensitive Arthur—Lyons River area. The TasMag project, owned by Perth-based Indcor Limited, is a $700-million proposal to mine the area, with a smelter at Burnie. 

Bauxite, Alumina and Aluminium

Development of an Australian aluminium export industry is mainly the result of the discovery is mainly the result of the discovery of huge reserves of bauxite in Western Australia and North Queenslands in the 1950s.  They were of such size compared with local demand that industry development was planned on the basis of export markets.  The relatively large and low-cost energy supplies available in Australia were also a factor in development plants.

Australia produces about 36 per cent of all the world's bauxite - the red ore of aluminium. Australia also produces around one-third of the world's alumina - the oxide of the metal refined from bauxite - which is then smelted to become aluminium.

Australia's wealth in bauxite was slow to be developed. When the nation's first alumina refinery and smelter began production at Bell Bay in Tasmania in 1955 its bauxite feed was imported.

Since then, Australia has moved from being an importer of bauxite to the world's leading producer. In 2000-01, Australia produced 51 million tonnes of bauxite, 16 million tonnes of alumina and 1.8 million tonnes of primary aluminium. Japan was the major market for this aluminium, taking 45 per cent of all exports.

Much of the bauxite mined in Australia is processed within Australia. With so much energy used in the process - particularly in smelting aluminium from alumina - Australia's vast reserves of coal, both black and brown, and 
natural gas make it an attractive location to complete the process.

Australia's vast resources of bauxite are located at open-cut operations at Weipa in Queensland, Gove in the Northern Territory and the Darling Ranges in Western Australia.

Comalco, a Rio Tinto subsidiary, works the Weipa deposits. It ships most of its production to the world's largest alumina refinery, at Gladstone in Queensland. This refinery produces about 7 per cent of the Western world's alumina, much of which is smelted to aluminium at the nearby Boyne Smelter; some Weipa bauxite also goes to an alumina refinery in Sardinia.

The Gove deposits are owned by Alcan and operated by Nabalco Limited, with the bauxite refined into alumina near the mine.

The Darling Range deposits are worked by companies such as Alcoa, which has refineries at Wagerup, Pinjarra and Kwinana, and Worsley Alumina, which has a refinery near Collie. Alcoa ships alumina from Kwinana to Portland and Point Henry in Victoria, where aluminium is smelted. 

Australia's aluminium/alumina industry makes a substantial contribution to the national economy. In 1998-99 this included the direct employment of over 12,000 people with wages and salaries of $677 million and turnover of $8 million. Export earnings were nearly $9 billion in 2000-01.

Much of the employment and other economic activity for the industry benefits regional areas such as the Hunter Valley in New South Wales where two large smelters at Tomago and Kurri Kurri take advantage of the region's coal reserves for fuel. 

The industry has seen prodigious growth in 35 years.  It has 92,000 employees at its bauxite and alumina facilities in Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory and aluminium smelters in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania.  Economically recoverable bauxite resources stand at 4.4 billion tonnes and Australia is now the world's largest producer of bauxite and alumina and the fourth largest producer of aluminium. 

Expansion plans for alumina are under way at the Wagerup and Worsry refineries in Western Australia.  In addition, expansion of aluminium smelter capacity is planned at the Boyne Island plant in Queensland. 

Gold

Australia holds 10 per cent of the world's economic demonstrated resources of gold. It is the third largest gold producer in the world and the third largest holder of gold resources worldwide.

At the start of the 21st century, this precious metal continues to be a major export earner for Australia. Annual production and exports are around 300 tonnes and annual export income is around $5 billion.

Although gold is mined in every state and the Northern Territory, about two-thirds of Australia's gold reserves occur in Western Australia. Most of the nation's production comes from open-cut mines, but there are still significant underground operations. The falling price of gold - from an average of $US388 per ounce in 1996 to US$279 per ounce in 2000 - led operators to become more efficient by improving their methods and increasing the scale of their operations.

Modern mining techniques grind gold-bearing rock into a fine powder so that its gold content can be extracted by chemical methods. For some ores, the gold can be extracted by treating the crushed and ground ore with a dilute solution of sodium cyanide. The gold dissolves and can be extracted from the solution. For more difficult ores, where the gold is locked in sulphide minerals, extra processing is needed before cyanidation. This can include roasting or biological leaching in which bacterial action makes the ore more amenable to gold extraction.

Scientists at the CSIRO have been at the forefront of using bacteria in innovative ways to mine gold. The bacteria catalyse the oxidation and leaching of sulfur and iron from ore to make extraction easier.

The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia is Australia's largest gold mine. It is operated by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines (KCGM) on behalf of its joint-venture owners, Normandy Mining and Homestake Mining Company. The mine is progressively absorbing areas previously worked by underground methods through the combination of large-scale mining equipment and high-volume treatment plant resulting in low operating costs.

Kalgoorlie's other major mine, Mount Charlotte, is also operated by KCGM. It uses mechanised blast mining techniques to achieve economies of scale.

Mining company Sons of Gwalia operates the Sons of Gwalia underground mines at Leonora, Laverton and Southern Cross regions in Western Australia.

Queensland is Australia's second largest producer of gold. Annual production is about 37 tonnes which is around 
10 per cent of Australia's total production. Gold is mined mainly in the north-west usually in association with copper. Queensland's major mines are at Mount Leyshon and Kidston, as well as at Charters Towers and Gympie.

In the Northern Territory, mines include those in the vicinity of The Granites in the Tanami region, Tennant Creek and Pine Creek. Gold production in the Northern Territory was 21.5 tonnes in 2000-01, slightly more than the output of gold mines at Cadia, Ridgeway, Northparkes and in the Peak and Cobar areas in New South Wales.

At Bendigo in Victoria, the site of the original gold fields in Australia, Bendigo Mining NL is seeking to reopen the New Bendigo Goldfield in 2004. One hundred and fifty years after gold was first discovered in the region, plans are underway to begin mining in the second largest gold-producing fields in Australia.

Base Metals

Copper, Lead and Zinc, the 'base metals', often occur together, much to the consternation of the early Australian metallurgists who struggled to separate them. The lead and silver could be extracted from the ore, but not its zinc content. Between the start of mining in 1885 and 1905, mines at Broken Hill in western New South Wales stockpiled 6 million tonnes of ore from which they were unable to extract the zinc.

In the early 1900s, Melbourne consulting brewer Charles Vincent Potter, BHP General Manager Guillaume Delprat and others progressively developed the famous selective flotation process that became a major Australian contribution to world mining practice. The process bubbles air through a water-borne mixture of the ores and causes some to float and some to sink.

Today, base metals figure prominently in Australia's minerals thanks to the discovery and development of many world-class deposits. Since 1996, substantial investment in new and expanded mines and processing facilities has contributed to a significant rise in export income. In 2000-01, earnings from exports of copper, lead and zinc were $4.7 billion—more than double the level just five years ago.

Major areas of base metal production include Cannington, Century, George Fisher, Hilton and Mount Isa in Queensland; Broken Hill and North Parkes in western New South Wales; Rosebery in Tasmania; Scuddles, Gossan Hill and the Lennard Shelf deposits in Western Australia; Olympic Dam in South Australia; and McArthur River in the Northern Territory. However, there is considerable potential for further discovery and development of additional base metal deposits in Australia.

Major producer MIM produces copper, gold, zinc, lead, silver and coal in Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and Argentina. The company mines and smelts copper at Mount Isa in northwestern Queensland and carries out refining at Townsville. Copper and gold produced in mines at Ernest Henry, also in north-western Queensland, are smelted and refined at Mount Isa and Townsville.

BHP Billiton operates the silver and lead Cannington mine, 250 kilometres south-east of Mount Isa in Queensland. Cannington is the world's largest lowest cost silver and lead mine producer. It supplies smelters in Australia, Korea, Europe and Japan.

The Century Mine in Queensland, owned by Pasminco, is one of the largest zinc mines in the world with an annual capacity of 5 million tonnes.

Some of Australia's earliest major mines were based on rich secondary copper ores. But despite a long history of extraction, continual discoveries of new resources has made Australia a world-class copper-producing nation.

Australian copper mine production in 2000-01 was 878,000 tonnes of contained metal. Over three-quarters of this was exported as either copper ores and concentrates or refined copper. Australia's major customers for ores and concentrates are Japan, China, India and Korea, while major customers for refined metal are Taiwan, Thailand, Germany and Japan.

One of the biggest copper producing mines in the world is Olympic Dam in South Australia, which is owned and operated by WMC. The company mines, smelts and refines copper on the spot, also producing uranium oxide, refined gold and silver as by-products. WMC completed a $1.9 billion expansion of Olympic Dam in 1999 which tripled the mine's capacity to 200,000 tonnes of copper annually and it is expected to undertake further expansion.

Australia is the world's largest producer and exporter of lead. It has around 23 per cent of the world's economic demonstrated resources.

The Mount Isa region in north-west Queensland is known to contain about 28 per cent of the world's known lead. Other major mining operations are at Elura near Cobar in New South Wales and Rosebery in Tasmania. The world's largest lead smelter and refinery is at Port Pirie in South Australia, where lead from Broken Hill and other mines is refined.

Australia's main customers for refined lead are Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, India and Malaysia. Unrefined lead bullion is shipped to the United Kingdom for refining, while ores and concentrates go mainly to Korea, the European Union and Japan for the metal to be extracted.

Similarly, Australia ranks first in the world in economic demonstrated resources for zinc and is the world's second largest producer of the metal. World-class zinc-lead-silver deposits have been developed at Broken Hill, Mount Isa, Lennard Shelf, McArthur River, Cannington and Century.

Australian exports of refined zinc were 391,000 tonnes in 2000-01 and went mainly to Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia. Exports of zinc in ores and concentrates were 1,000,000 tonnes (metal content) and went mainly to Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands.

A recent development is the construction of a zinc refinery at Townsville in northern Queensland by Sun Metals Corporation, a subsidiary of Korea Zinc, one of the world's largest zinc producers. The plant, which has cost of over $1 billion, exports zinc metal to Asia and the United States. 
 

Non Metallurgical

Gemstones

Australia is a major centre for diamond production and most of this production comes from the Argyle open-pit mine in Western Australia. The mine is one of the world's largest producers of diamonds by quantity - 22 million carats in 2000-01 - equal to about 5 tonnes.

The Argyle processing plant is among the most efficient in the world. After the ore is separated into light and heavy fractions, the diamond-containing heavy fractions are passed through an X-ray machine that causes the diamonds to glow. A photoelectric cell detects each diamond and triggers an air jet that blows it into a bin for collection. This method is very fast and 99 per cent effective.

The vast majority of Argyle's production consists of small, brown to near colourless diamonds of near gem quality. These diamonds are labour intensive because of their small size and receive substantial processing. More than 90 per cent of these are cut in India, destined for use in the jewellery industry. The proportion of near gem quality diamonds is increasing as a result of the developing skills and technology of diamond manufacturers.

Industrial quality diamonds, used for cutting and polishing, account for about 25 per cent of Argyle's output while less than 0.01 per cent are the desirable gem-quality pink to red hues. Pink diamonds are the rarest of coloured diamonds and the 'Argyle Pinks' are particularly special because of their depth of colour, ranging from delicate pastel rose to full-bodied purple.

Despite this comparatively small amount, Argyle produces over 90 per cent of the world's pink diamonds. It is estimated that the mine's total annual output would fill the back of five one-tonne trucks, but the pink diamonds would fill only one truck's ashtray.

While nearly all of Australia's diamond production comes from the Argyle deposit, small volumes of alluvial diamonds come from nearby Smoke Creek. Several small diamond 'pipes' with much higher gem quality than 
Argyle are also mined at Merlin in the Northern Territory and small quantities of gem-quality diamonds have also been mined recently at Copeton in New South Wales.

Australia is the world's major source of precious opals, producing 95 per cent of its output. During the 1990s, annual sales were about $80 million. Most opal mining and trading is done by individuals or small groups of miners. The traditional image of the industry is of the lone miner picking away in an underground tunnel, but nowadays most of the work is done by machinery. Radar and electric currents are used to find opal-rich areas and bulldozers remove the overburden down to opal level.

Opals in Australia are produced in South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. South Australia produces about half of Australia's rough opal. Fields at Coober Pedy and Andamooka are famous for their white opals. The New South Wales industry is centred on Lightning Ridge, the main source of the highly prized black opal, with minor production also at White Cliffs. Queensland has widespread opal fields, mainly in the west, which produce boulder opals in which the opal is an integral part of its rock backing.

Australia's main opal customers are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, the United States and Europe. Much of the opal is sold in the raw on the gemfields, but some top-quality material is cut in Australia which increases in value tenfold.

Australia is one of the world's leading sapphire producers, producing between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of world output. Australia's annual exports of sapphires during the 1990s averaged about $13 million.

The main areas for sapphire production are Inverell and Glen Innes in the New England region of New South Wales. In contrast with opal mining, sapphire production is dominated by a small number of large-scale miners.

In Queensland, sapphires have been mined commercially for more than 100 years on the Anakie field, west of Emerald. Areas of central Queensland are also being explored.

Australian sapphires are found in either alluvial or volcanic residues. The sapphires occur as free particles or pebbles in clayey gravel derived from weathering of their host rocks. The sapphire deposits are mined by the open-cut method of mining.

Larger, high-quality sapphires are usually processed locally in Australia, but most of the lower grade sapphires 
(the bulk of production) are exported uncut for processing in Sri Lanka and Thailand, the centre of the world's coloured gemstone trade.
 

Mineral Sand

Australia is a world leader in the production of mineral sands. The mineral sands ilmenite and rutile are the basic materials for making titanium metal. The bright white pigment titanium dioxide and zircon are used for ceramics foundry and refractory applications.

During 2000-01, Australia earned export income of $154 million from ilmenite concentrate, $161 million from rutile concentrate, $317 million from synthetic rutile, $221 million from zircon concentrate and $494 million from titanium dioxide pigment.

Mineral sands are found in most coastal regions of Australia, from the southern tip of Western Australia to Cape York in northern Queensland and inland at former beach deposits in north-west Victoria and south-western New South Wales. The Murray Basin will become the largest source of future mineral sands production with proven reserves of around $13 billion.

Ilk Resources, Cable Sands and the Tiwest joint venture work Western Australian deposits, with mining operations at many sites including Capel, Eneabba, Waroona and Busselton and processing plants at Capel, Geraldton, Bunbury, Muchea and Kwinana. Iluka also has a 43 per cent interest in Consolidated Rutile Limited, Queensland's only titanium and zircon mineral sands producer, which operates two mines on North Stradbroke Island, offshore from Brisbane.

In 2001, Murray Basin Titanium began mining rutile and zircon at Wemen, near Robinvale in Victoria. Continued mineral exploration in the Murray Basin, which straddles New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, shows significant heavy mineral sand deposits and point to the further development of new mineral sand resources in the future.
 

Area under cultivation

470 million hectares.

6% of Australia is farmland: 58% pastures and 14% forest. The remaining 22% is either not suitable for agriculture use or is built upon.

Agriculture Products

wheat, barley, sugarcane, fruits.

Marine Resources

The most valuable fisheries harvest lobsters, prawns, fin-fish and abalone. Export sales go mainly to markets in Japan and the United States. Strict fisheries management regulations protect fish stocks in Australian waters, to ensure the long-term viability of the fishing industry.