Photo: 123RF
The Minerals Council says New Zealand should open up to more mining, arguing it can be done responsibly.
New Zealand is in talks with the United States about the supply of rare and critical minerals, as Donald Trump seeks to reduce America's reliance on China for material it sees as pivotal for tech innovation and national security.
While no decisions have been made, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed officials are working through analysis, targeted consultation and providing advice to relevant ministers.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon dismissed the reporting of these talks as "speculative and hypothetical" on Morning Report earlier today.
He said New Zealand was among more than 40 countries the US was talking too and stressed no Cabinet decisions had been made.
"I think the commentary, frankly, is probably a bit frothy and a bit ahead of itself."
Luxon went on to say he wanted a critical minerals sector, that New Zealand had critical minerals and that critical minerals were "critical" to evolving technologies like AI superconductors.
"Are we going to develop in our own brutal self interest? Yes we will," he said.
'A lot of excitement around these minerals'
Josie Vidal, CEO of the Minerals Council - the industry association representing mining in NZ - told Midday Report New Zealand could and should scale up mining, arguing it can be done responsibly.
"We believe that we should mine what we can here because of the high standards that we have when it comes to looking after people and the environment.
"There are some parts of the world that can't claim that and we can claim responsible mining.
"We have some of the strictest environmental conditions in the world and that's evidenced every day in responsible mining here and that that will become an important part of the significance of our minerals because we can really back the provenance, whereas some jurisdictions can't do that.
"A lot of people in supply chains for expensive tech do want to know that they're not using child labour and things like that so with all of our primary production, we've got a really good story to tell."
Vidal said the release of the government's critical minerals list last year was an "exciting moment" for the mining industry.
"[It's] something we've been asking for for a long time.
"It's a highly productive industry with well paying jobs and you'll note that in the areas that there is established mining, it's a big contribution to GDP in those areas.
"For us in New Zealand, the big issue is it has to be economically viable to mine and it requires huge investment. That investment comes from offshore, so quite a lot of what I do is talk to investors about the environment here for investing which at the moment is seen as pretty good for the mining industry."
Vidal said the Minerals Council hadn't been consulted by the government on specific discussions with the US, adding it was "encouraging" to hear the Prime Minister say he wanted to develop the critical minerals sector.
"We couldn't agree more. The critical minerals that there's a lot of interest in obviously do include the rare earths vanadium and there's a substantial vanadium mining project in the fast track process to extract vanadium-rich titanomagnetite off the Taranaki coast.
"There's also interest in antinomy, which is associated with gold, and there are deposits of that around the West Coast, Marlborough and Otago.
"There's a big deposit of Tungsten, which is another one, in Otago that is being looked at as a possibility. So there's a lot of excitement around these minerals and we believe we should be part of a global supply chain. We're a trading nation, so we trade with all comers and that needs to be clear."
Asked if there was a risk New Zealand could be "caught up" in the geopolitics of mining, Vidal said it was about answering the door when someone knocked.
"Our industry is made up of private companies and listed companies who trade all around the world and do so very successfully and I think they will continue to do so.
"It doesn't really matter what the geopolitics are. As I say, if demand comes knocking on your door, you say, yes, I can supply or no, I can't, and it's up to individual companies how they do that."
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