Surging global demand for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage is pushing Australia to move beyond spodumene concentrate exports into domestic refining and cathode‑grade chemical production. Industry proposals centre on converting hard‑rock feed into battery‑grade lithium hydroxide and carbonate in Western Australia, leveraging existing Tier‑1 deposits and port infrastructure but facing high energy costs, skills shortages and permitting timelines. For miners and process engineers, the shift implies greater focus on impurity control, reagent optimisation and integration of hydrometallurgical circuits with upstream mine planning.

New Hope Group has lifted coal output across its Australian assets and is advancing growth plans at the Bengalla thermal coal mine in the Hunter Valley, where it holds an 80 per cent interest alongside Mitsui, Taipower and J-Power. The open-cut operation, which typically produces export-quality thermal coal for Asian power utilities via the Port of Newcastle, is the company’s key near-term expansion focus. For mine planners and geotechs, any Bengalla growth path will centre on additional strip mining, dragline and truck–shovel sequencing, and associated waste dump and haul road reconfiguration.

Australian miners are hitting a data wall as high‑bandwidth sensors, autonomous fleets and video streams overwhelm traditional cloud links, pushing operations towards private LTE networks and on‑site edge computing. Vendors such as Vocus are pairing Starlink Business Rural satellite backhaul with 4G/5G private LTE to keep haul trucks, crushers and fixed plant connected in real time, even on remote pits and waste dumps. For engineers, this shift means designing networks and control systems around low‑latency, on‑site processing for fleet dispatch, collision avoidance and condition monitoring rather than centralised data centres.