CW Specialty Strategies Forum: Portfolio management, sustainability, China key to success in specialties | Chemical Week

As Australia seeks to reduce emissions, and as international tensions highlight the country’s reliance on volatile trade relationships, experts say the mining sector has a pivotal role to play in securing a self-sufficient, greener nation.  Australia holds the third largest amount of vanadium in the world, yet doesn’t produce any.  International tensions, a focus of renewable energy, and overpopulation are factors driving up demand.  Australia has an “enormous” opportunity to supply the world with the “new-economy mineral”.  It is vanadium mining that has got industry experts excited. 

On a dusty side street in Auki, a seaside market town on the island of Malaita, Arania Enterprises is bustling. Cocoa dryers come and go, bringing plenty of cocoa beans for sale, and its unassuming wood-framed warehouse is stocked full of giant bags ready for export.