New Zealand funds heavy mineral projects
Sydney (6 July)
The New Zealand Government plans to invest NZ$50 million in two South Island-based heavy mineral projects – Tāiko Critical Minerals’ Barrytown development and Westland Minerals (WMS) Group’s eponymous development – to support processed resource exports.
The Government will give WMS and Tāiko up to NZ$30 million and NZ$20 million, respectively, to help fund ore processing plants, Resources Minister Shane Jones said in a statement on 6 July.
The New Zealand Government plans to support WMS and Tāiko through its Regional Infrastructure Fund (RIF), but has not confirmed funding arrangements with the companies. Tāiko will work with officials on funding details, it told Lithos on 6 July.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) often structures RIF investments as concessionary loans or equity deals. MBIE also prefers to support projects through loans to limit Government risk and simplify deals, according to the agency.
Tāiko and WMS’s projects will process ores containing heavy minerals and rare-earth-bearing concentrates (monazite), Jones said in a statement. But they only appear to hold small monazite reserves, publicly-available resource estimates show.
Tāiko’s JORC-compliant Barrytown resource estimates – based on economically viable deposits – do not show monazite reserves, according to the company’s February 2026 NZX listing profile. Barrytown contains small reserves of monazite and xenotime, another rare-earth-rich mineral, Tāiko said in its listing profile.
WMS, a private company, has not released JORC-compliant resource estimates. But an August 2021 sample from its Nine Mile South deposit contained 0.03% monazite and less than 0.01% xenotime, Thomas Ritchie, a geologist representing WMS, told the West Coast Regional Council in March 2022.
WMS and Tāiko’s Barrytown projects hold large titanium dioxide-rich and broader heavy mineral-rich deposits, resource estimates show. The heavy minerals found at the two projects are mainly used to produce pigments and ceramics, and to extract titanium and zirconium for material production.
Tāiko plans to produce heavy minerals at Barrytown from 2028, it said in a community update on 30 June. The company will sell its Barrytown output to global end-users – including North American and European technology producers – through long-term offtake agreements, it said in February.
The New Zealand Government’s support for heavy mineral projects comes alongside pigment market challenges. Australian producer Iluka Resources idled its Cataby mine and SR2 rutile kiln in December 2025 because of low demand for mineral sands and pigments.
Iluka’s Cataby mine and SR2 kiln remain offline, it said in a quarterly report on 22 April. The company’s SR2 kiln restart timeline is subject to market conditions, it added.
By Avinash Govind