About the Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve
The Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve (CMSR) will secure the supply of select critical minerals for Australia and our key international partners.
Critical minerals and rare earths are vital inputs to the modern and future economy. They underpin the energy transition, high tech manufacturing, AI, digital and defence technologies.
The CMSR supports strategically important critical minerals projects where private finance is not available due to volatile markets. This helps:
- address supply chain vulnerabilities
- mitigate against market distortions
- build a sustainable domestic industry.
With other measures for critical minerals, the CMSR reinforces Australia’s position as a reliable and stable supplier.
How the CMSR will work
The Minister for Resources leads the CMSR and our department leads delivery. The Export Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment (Strategic Reserve) Bill 2026 gave Export Finance Australia (EFA) an expanded range of financial tools to support the CMSR’s financial and commercial functions.
The CMSR draws on $1 billion in funding from the expanded $5 billion Critical Minerals Facility. The Australian Government has allocated a further $150 million for selective stockpiling of minerals, where required.
The CMSR works by securing rights to an initial subset of critical minerals produced in Australia and on-selling those rights to meet demand.
Financial solutions and tools
The CMSR’s financial tools can secure, sell and selectively stockpile critical minerals. These include:
- offtake agreements with fixed or floating prices
- trading in forward offtake contracts
- intermediary demand and supply aggregation
- physical stockpiling
- contracts-for-difference (price floors and ceilings).
Support for projects from the CMSR will depend on the needs and conditions of specific mineral markets. This will allow Australia to respond to fast-moving market dynamics and the unique circumstances of different minerals.
Minerals in focus
The CMSR will initially focus on securing a small subset of critical minerals.
We considered the minerals on Australia’s Critical Minerals List based on:
- suitability: critical minerals with vulnerable supply chains where Australia has the strongest potential to meet demand
- priority: critical minerals most important for Australia’s national security and economic resilience
- potential: existing Australian projects in the pipeline that could meet identified needs.
Critical minerals subset
| Critical mineral | Uses |
|---|---|
| Antimony |
|
| Gallium |
|
| Light rare earth elements (LREEs) particularly neodymium and praseodymium |
|
| Heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) particularly dysprosium and terbium |
|
Criteria for support
To access support from the CMSR, projects must meet the following criteria:
- relate to extracting and/or processing minerals in Australia
- the mineral(s) must fall within the CMSR mineral subset (antimony, gallium, rare earth elements)
- a pre-feasibility must be completed, or capable of being completed quickly
- need at least $20 million of funding, financing or offtake support.
International partnerships
The CMSR will support Australia’s collaboration with international partners to diversify critical minerals supply chains. This includes:
- Canada
- Europe
- Japan
- Republic of Korea
- United Kingdom
- United States.