Resources Minister Shane Jones wants to double minerals exports within a decade, partially on the back of a new critical minerals industry.
But with a reduction of funding for university programmes, and a shift away from “traditional” geology, some in the industry are worried we won’t have the workforce to make it happen.
Tertiary Education Minister Penny Simmonds says it’s up to universities to attract students – and history suggests the sector won’t be getting a budget bump to make that any easier in what Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour is calling a “tough love” budget.
Jones hopes the United States will invest in local projects as he pushes to double mineral export values to $3 billion by 2035.
New Zealand is home to many critical minerals – things like vanadium, antimony and tungsten – but experts in the field say we’re underequipped to make the most of whatever opportunities may lie in store.
Jones has allocated millions towards beefing up the infrastructure around critical minerals, but acknowledges the shortfall goes beyond that: even if all the equipment and systems were in place, New Zealand doesn’t have the training pathways necessary to actually staff this industry with homegrown experts.
More robust geology and engineering courses are what the critical minerals industry wants to see out of future budgets.
Chris Bumby, chief materials scientist at the Robinson Research Institute, says this is a global problem.
While demand for critical minerals has increased, graduation rates for the people who actually produce and refine those minerals – at least in Western nations – has fallen behind.
Bumby says most graduates from the two process engineering courses in New Zealand end up in the food industry, while there is no degree in mineral processing. Over in Australia, the country may be ahead of New Zealand in critical minerals development but its production of new minerals engineers has dropped.
“If you look at it at a broader level than just Western economies, we’ve just frankly allowed this to atrophy and just passed it to China.”
China controls the critical minerals trade, a position the US is looking to undermine by funding operations in allied countries like New Zealand. Jones wants to cash in on this opportunity, but critical minerals mining and processing is a different beast to coal or gold, and requires specialist engineers at every step of the process.
“New Zealand trains no mining engineers at all; we haven’t had a school of mines since 1991,” says Bumby.
In 1878, Otago University opened as the Otago School of Mines, a moniker still carved into the limestone and andesite blocks of the original building on campus. These days, the focus of that building has shifted from mining to attracting foreign capital via international students. The only relic of the original programme is a rock crushing machine too large to move out of the basement.
New Zealand’s premier mining programme had transferred to Auckland by the 1980s, while what remained of the geology department shifted buildings and focus.
In 2023, Otago University faced a $60m deficit and academic staff cuts. The geology department lost a third of its full-time employees, including experts in processes essential to the mining industry, and enrolments declined. Some of its earlier mining-focused graduates still work in the Waihi and Macraes gold mines, but plenty moved to Australia, taking their talents with them.
Bumby says there’s a skills gap in the mineral sector, and the industry knows it. He thinks the way government funding is allocated to universities like Otago tends to push students into courses that are cheap to run, requiring desks and computers rather than large labs with expensive technology.
If the coalition Government is serious about growing a manufacturing industry, there’s one basic prerequisite: “We have to train more people who can make things.”
Just down the road from Otago’s campus is the headquarters of Hardie Pacific, a critical minerals-focused company whose founder was sent to Washington, D.C. as part of ongoing minerals deal negotiations last year.
Principal geologist Tom Ritchie is an Otago geology graduate, and was at the table earlier this month when companies like his pitched potential critical minerals projects to American delegates. Their hopes: securing the type of funding Jones thinks will “supercharge” the mining industry.
Ritchie says research funding has shifted away from traditional geology and more towards Earth science, climate and hazards – “also very important,” he says – which has cost New Zealand a bit of its competitive edge in the sector.
Simmonds says the Government wants universities to align with areas that are going to grow the economy and increase productivity, with critical minerals, AI, quantum research and space technologies all cited as potential niches.
However, she says it’s up to universities to design these courses and attract students to support them: “It’s not the funding that determines how many students come in.”
But technical subjects like minerals processing require expensive and unique equipment, and academics with the expertise to use them, which Ritchie says we’ve lost.
“I think they need to invest and get the ball rolling,” he says. The current situation isn’t all doom and gloom – Ritchie has hired a team of five Otago geology graduates – but without the right equipment and staff, “students don’t know they’re interested in stuff until they have an opportunity to learn about it”.
New Zealand Minerals Council chief executive Josie Vidal tells Newsroom the industry has “been concerned for some time about the lack of, or reduction in, investment in disciplines such as geology and materials science”.
Many of the graduates that do come out of these programmes head overseas to Australia, where the industry is more developed (last month, the Australian government announced a $6b critical minerals deal with the US).
If New Zealand wants to be serious about its critical minerals potential, Vidal says we need to start planning now for geology graduates to be specialised four or five years down the line.
“The mining industry wants to employ New Zealanders, rather than wave them all goodbye as they head off to Australia,” she says.
Last week, at a critical minerals forum hosted at Victoria University of Wellington, Vidal joined a panel of geologists, iwi representatives and conservationists. She admitted, during a discussion on the industry, that she sent her own child to Australia with a clear message: “Don’t come back, because there’s nothing for you in this country.”
Outside the lecture hall, a throng of undergrads rallied in a common area for a student protest. Vidal took a minute to remind the panelists of their message: “No job, no pay, we’re gone.”
