Mineral Resources (MinRes) is restarting operations at its 100%-owned Bald Hill lithium mine in Western Australia after what it describes as a significant and sustained recovery in lithium prices. The restart follows several months of planning to re-establish safe operating procedures and production systems at the site, located about 50 km from Kambalda in the Eastern Goldfields. For mine planners and contractors, the move signals renewed demand for contract mining, crushing and haulage capacity tied to spodumene output in the region.

The University of Queensland’s Collaborative Consortium for Coarse Particle Processing Research is entering a second five‑year phase to scale up coarse particle flotation technologies that allow recovery of particles up to several millimetres, reducing grinding energy and water use. Phase I delivered the JKHFmini laboratory rig and plant trials with Eriez HydroFloat and FLSmidth REFLUX Flotation Cell units on copper and gold ores, targeting coarser grind sizes than conventional circuits. The renewed program will expand pilot‑scale testing and integrated circuit modelling, with direct implications for comminution circuit design, tailings management and brownfield plant retrofits.

Larvotto Resources is progressing a tailings reprocessing and site rehabilitation strategy at the historic Hillgrove antimony–gold project in New South Wales, targeting metal recovery from legacy tailings rather than fresh underground ore. The plan centres on re-treating existing tailings storage facilities using modern processing to extract residual antimony and gold while reshaping and capping the deposits to contemporary geotechnical and environmental standards. For engineers, the project signals further demand for tailings characterisation, stability assessment and water management design on brownfield Australian sites.