Australia is tapping its critical minerals supply with the hope of creating new partnerships, attracting more investment, and producing alternative supplies to China’s existing monopoly. Last year, the Gulf Arab states emerged as a potential untapped region for both partnership and investment.
Deepening Australian-GCC cooperation offers not only bilateral financial and economic incentives for Australia, but the GCC’s growing footprint in ASEAN opens the door for Australia and the GCC to partner on developing trade alternatives in the Indo-Pacific region.
Australia’s Critical Mineral Capacity
Australia is emerging as a global powerhouse in critical minerals. It already supplies nearly half of the world’s lithium and ranks among the leading producers of cobalt, manganese, rare earths, zircon, and tantalum. Furthermore, the country holds some of the largest untapped reserves of cobalt, vanadium, tungsten, and other essential resources for clean energy technologies and advanced manufacturing. This combination of proven output and unrealised potential gives Canberra a strong platform to expand its role in global supply chains.
To seize this opportunity, the government launched the 2030 Critical Minerals Strategy, a plan designed to advance Australia’s position in the value chain. The strategy offers incentives and financing to attract investors into refining, midstream processing, and advanced materials manufacturing, supported by an A$4 billion Critical Minerals Facility that co-finances projects aimed at building supply-chain resilience.
The move seeks to diversify the sources of essential materials, which are currently concentrated in the hands of a few countries. Only three states control 86 per cent of the global supply for key critical minerals, and China dominates refining for 19 of 20 critical minerals—often with market shares above 70 per cent. Australia is positioning itself as a reliable alternative.
Shared GCC–Australia Interests in Critical Minerals
Australia and the GCC share the ambition of capturing a larger share of the critical minerals value chain. For Gulf states, critical minerals are still a young industry, and they need external expertise, extraction capacity, and midstream processing partnerships to accelerate growth. Australia requires large-scale investment capital to fully develop its resource potential and move into higher-value processing and manufacturing. Cooperation aligns structural gaps on both sides.
The UAE has become Canberra’s frontrunner. In 2024, Canberra and Abu Dhabi signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA)—Australia’s first trade pact in the Middle East. When implemented, this will eliminate nearly all tariffs on Australian exports to the UAE. It also set up a framework for cooperation on critical minerals and a bilateral investment council to channel Gulf sovereign wealth into Australian projects. In Abu Dhabi’s KEZAD industrial zone, Australian firm Lepidico, backed by Abu Dhabi Ports Group, has already developed the Middle East’s first lithium hydroxide plant in the UAE to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
Other GCC states, such as Saudi Arabia, could soon follow suit. Australian officials see considerable room for growth with the Kingdom, especially in critical minerals, and should cultivate these ties. Riyadh has made mining a central pillar of Vision 2030, and according to recent estimates, it has significant reserves that are largely untapped. Their goal is to increase the sector’s GDP contribution from US$17 billion to approximately US$75 billion by 2035. This creates new opportunities for partnerships. Cooperation with Australia is therefore likely to focus on mining partnerships and industrial projects through Manara Minerals—a joint venture between Ma’aden and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) that serves as Saudi Arabia’s flagship vehicle for global mining investment. Manara has already taken a stake in Vale’s base metals division.
While these bilateral mineral partnerships would form the backbone of Australia–GCC cooperation, they are not the whole story. Increasingly, Gulf investment and logistics networks in Southeast Asia are linking these ties into a broader Indo-Pacific framework, which could help foster an emerging Australia–GCC–ASEAN triangle that connects resources, capital, and trade corridors.
An Australia–GCC–ASEAN Nexus
Canberra’s Indo-Pacific strategy could capitalise on the growing GCC footprint in ASEAN countries. Australia can leverage Gulf cooperation to align its growing economic priorities with those of ASEAN countries. The GCC is expanding its presence across ASEAN under the China-GCC-ASEAN framework, especially in infrastructure, logistics, and energy, but under a trilateral framework with Beijing. This creates greater potential to connect Australia’s ASEAN and GCC ties, diversifying Indo-Pacific trade beyond China.
GCC capital and logistics amplify this agenda, creating new potential alignments in critical minerals and energy ties across the Indo-Pacific. For example, Dubai-based DP World operates terminals across ASEAN and in Australia, giving it a unique role in shaping new trade corridors. For Canberra, this network is a valuable bridge, allowing Australian goods to move more seamlessly not just into the Gulf but also into Southeast Asian markets, where GCC firms are already established.
This dovetails neatly with Australia’s Indo-Pacific priorities as outlined in its 2025 foreign policy roadmap, which explicitly links economic diversification and supply-chain resilience to national security. Canberra has also underscored that ASEAN is central to Australia’s long-term prosperity. In this context, triangulating ties with both ASEAN and the GCC offers a practical way for Australia to solidify these priorities—broadening its trade corridors, reinforcing supply-chain resilience, and deepening its engagement in the Indo-Pacific economy.
Jesse Marks is the CEO of Rihla Research & Advisory LLC, an international geopolitical consultancy focused on the Middle East and Asia.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and can be republished with attribution
