The roadmap will be launched this week by federal Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane and Western Australian Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Marmion.
The launch of the roadmap comes only three weeks after the Boston Consulting Group warned of a crisis in global greenfields exploration.
The initiative outlines the industry’s long-term research and development and new pre-competitive geoscience data needs to improve greenfields exploration and the discovery of new mineral deposits.
Macfarlane said new technology needed to be developed to enable Australia’s explorers to search beneath the 80% of the country that was covered by non-mineralised rocks and sediments.
“Most major mineral deposits were discovered decades ago, largely from regions that outcropped,” Macfarlane said.
“In mining these areas, Australia has developed a high-quality, efficient and world-renowned mining sector, but it means exploration success rates have declined over time.”
As deposits get deeper and harder to find, exploration also becomes more expensive – a major issue in the current equity markets.
“It has been almost four decades since the $1 trillion minerals deposit was discovered under 300m of barren cover at the tier one Olympic Dam deposit,” Macfarlane said.
“The Australian resources industry must now focus on the next generation of major, tier one discoveries that will add significantly to the economy.”
The roadmap identifies 16 high-priority R&D technology development activities out of 45 focus areas designed to boost exploration success over the next decade.
The 111-page report, which AMIRA describes as a “call to arms” is the culmination of cooperative effort amongst 25 companies, two industry bodies, six state and territory geological surveys, Geoscience Australia, CSIRO and the Centre for Exploration Targeting at the University of Western Australia and Curtin University since mid-2014.
Marmion said AMIRA had a great track record for facilitating collaborative mining industry projects.
“Work by the company in 2005 for the drilling exploration sector laid out a multitude of opportunities for cheaper, safer and smarter ways of going about one of the core activities of minerals exploration,” he said.
“This led to the Deep Exploration Technologies CRC, which has been creating commercialised solutions for the drilling industry ever since.”
Companies that sponsored the initiative included global majors such as Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Antofagasta, AngloGold Ashanti, Newcrest Mining, First Quantum Minerals, Glencore’s Mt Isa Mines and Teck Australia, mid-tiers such as Evolution Mining, Sandfire Resources and Western Areas, as well as local juniors Gold Road Resources, Minotaur Exploration, Aruma Resources, Monax Mining, Encounter Resources, Silver City Minerals, Sipa Resources, Stavely Minerals and Investigator Resources.
