There are tens of trillions of dollars worth of mineral wealth yet to be unlocked in Australia, according to a new global report commissioned by The Gold Bullion Company.
The England-based metals trader found Australia is the eighth largest producer of copper in the world, churning out about 819,000 metric tonnes a year, but hosts about 100 million metric tonnes of the metal that is yet to be mined.
This reserves figure, which equates to about $1.34 trillion, puts the country in third spot just behind South American producer powerhouses Chile and Peru.
It also means in Australia unearthed copper is worth more than the equivalent untapped potential for gold.
Most copper production in Australia comes from the east coast, with BHP’s Olympic Dam in South Australia the largest producing mine across the land, followed by Newmont’s Cadia operation in New South Wales.
Sandfire Resources ran the high-grade DeGrussa copper mine in WA, but that was exhausted last year.
Australia has the most gold yet to be extracted of any nation, totalling around 12,000 metric tons of reserves, which is estimated to be worth approximately $1.25 trillion.
The country sits in third place behind China and Russia as the largest producers of the precious metal in the world, despite having more proven reserves.
On the iron ore front Australia is well ahead of its nearest rivals — Brazil and China — on the output front. The Gold Bullion Company forecasts that Australia has about $9.6 trillion of the steelmaking commodity left to mine.
Australia is estimated to still have about $635 billion worth of nickel in its earth, despite the ongoing market downturn. The instigator of that downturn, Indonesia, eclipses that amount with circa $1.5 trillion of current nickel reserves.
Australia is producing about 74,700 metric tonnes of lithium annually, the report states. If that output was stacked on a pile it would be almost 16 times the height of Mount Everest.
However, Australia was deemed to be the country facing the most acute shortage of the battery ingredient, with about $150 billion of current reserves. But that still equates to 83 years of production until a “critical” shortage.