Critical minerals is shifting from “mine” to “make” — and that’s where regional businesses win

For years, “critical minerals” in Australia mostly meant digging and shipping. That’s changing fast. The February 2026 Austrade Australian Critical Minerals Prospectus makes the shift explicit: it profiles 78 projects across 60 companies and (importantly) highlights 29 “midstream” processing projects alongside 49 mines—a deliberate push beyond mining into processing and value-adding.