Five gallium and antimony projects to watch in 2026: process and tailings lens
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Australia’s Federal Government has earmarked antimony and gallium as central to its $1.2 billion critical minerals funding package, putting downstream battery, semiconductor and defence supply chains in focus. Five advanced projects are flagged as near-term contenders for support, with proponents targeting integrated mining–processing flowsheets to recover gallium from bauxite/alumina and zinc circuits and antimony from polymetallic sulphide orebodies. For geotechnical and process engineers, the funding signal points to more complex tailings mineralogy, tighter impurity control in hydrometallurgical plants, and potential retrofits of existing concentrators and refineries.
Technical Brief
- Several proponents are designing integrated mine–refinery flowsheets to avoid shipping intermediate gallium-bearing concentrates.
- Tailings streams will contain elevated gallium/antimony, driving re-optimisation of thickening, filtration and storage designs.
- Hydrometallurgical circuits will require tighter control of pH, redox and impurity bleed to maintain semiconductor-grade purity.
- Retrofitting existing plants for gallium extraction will constrain layout, tie-in windows and shutdown durations.
- Similar critical-mineral retrofits are likely to prioritise modular solvent-extraction or ion-exchange skids to minimise brownfield disruption.
Our Take
The 2026 focus on gallium and antimony projects lines up with Australia’s plan to have a A$1.2 billion critical minerals reserve in place by year-end 2026, which explicitly targets domestically produced antimony and gallium for stockpiling; projects highlighted here are therefore well placed for potential offtake into that reserve.
Recent drilling success at Larvotto Resources’ Hillgrove gold–antimony project in New South Wales, covered elsewhere in our database, suggests that Australian antimony supply growth may come from polymetallic gold systems rather than stand‑alone antimony deposits, which has implications for project economics and processing flowsheets.
Within the 569 Mining stories and 20 keyword‑matched pieces in our coverage, gallium appears far less frequently than antimony, indicating that Australian gallium projects flagged for 2026 are still at an earlier and more concentrated stage of development, with a small number of assets likely to have outsized strategic importance.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
CMRR-io
Streamline coal mine roof stability assessments with our cloud-based CMRR software featuring automated calculations, multi-scenario analysis, and collaborative workflows.
HYDROGEO-io
Comprehensive hydrogeological testing platform for managing, analysing, and reporting on packer tests, lugeon values, and hydraulic conductivity assessments.
GEODB-io
Centralised geotechnical data management solution for storing, accessing, and analysing all your site investigation and material testing data.