Fox Meyer

They're funky little rocks that make electronics work better.

I mean, I guess we're going to piss off a lot of geologists here because, you know, they're minerals, not rocks is the classic thing.

And then actually these are elements, not minerals.

You know, elements build minerals, minerals build rocks like Legos.

But, you know, to use the Lego metaphor a bit further, it's like when you're building a Lego set, there might be one or two pieces that you need to do a very specific job to bring the whole thing together.

You only need one or two of them, but you need exactly those ones.

And that's sort of what the critical minerals are here.

You don't need a lot of them.

But they're absolutely essential to get very specific things to work well.

And those things are medical devices or autonomous weapon systems or batteries.

Heaps of things in the modern age that are increasingly important.

Well, you can find them pretty much up and down the country.

They tend to be on the west coasts of both islands.

But for example, you've got Tungsten north of Wanaka.

You've got Antimony in Reefton and Dunedin.

Copper in Fjordland and something called Molybdenum in Golden Bay.

Golden Bay, of course, gets its name from gold mining.

And almost all of these things are found close by to gold deposits.

They travel through the rock in the same way.

So anywhere you can find gold, you've probably got a pretty good shot at finding a critical mineral.