The Korea Mine Rehabilitation and Mineral Resource Corporation (KOMIR) and the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) regarding the increasing of exploration and development of mining resources in Australia. This comes after President Moon Jae-in’s visit to Australia, and the strategic cooperation agreement covers rare earths such as lithium, graphite, cobalt and nickel in order to support South Korea’s production of permanent magnets and batteries.

The Republic of Korea and Australia have made previous commitments in minerals and energy investment and partnerships – Korean investment in mining grew from $12.8 billion to $32.7 billion USD from 2011 to 2020. Australia currently supplies 40% of South Korea’s rare earths. This MoU follows the countries signing a $72 million USD funding commitment for the development of renewable energy and decarbonisation initiatives, including clean hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and reducing emissions in steel and iron ore mining and production.

KOMIR is the Korean government agency that oversees the Republic’s national resource security and developing the country’s overseas mining and processing capacity. One of its key objectives is securing and upgrading Korea’s access to critical minerals and other rare earths. The above MoU follows an earlier announcement in 2021 where KOMIR and Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) agreed to collaborate in producing critical minerals using KOMIR’s Korean Metals Plant.

As part of KOMIR’s ‘mine to metal’ strategy, ASM will provide rare earths and metals such as zirconium, niobium and hafnium from its Dubbo mining project in New South Wales to the Republic of Korea.

Source: https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/mca-to-strengthen-critical-minerals-exploration/