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Mines/Australia

Mt Cattlin mine

Mt Cattlin mine, Australia. Care and maintenance, open pit, mining lithium, tantalum.

Why Mt Cattlin is famous

Lithium and tantalum mine in Western Australia, listed in Rio Tinto's 2025 report among its lithium assets. Rio Tinto reports that the Mt Cattlin spodumene operation was placed on care and maintenance by the end of March 2025, soon after Rio completed its purchase of Arcadium Lithium.1,2,3

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 2022Wodgina lithium mine restarts4

What kind of deposit

Lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatite

Mt Cattlin today

Where lithium is mined todayWhere tantalum is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

Events

ExamplesWodgina lithium mine restartsWodgina restarted in 2022. Mt Cattlin went to care and maintenance by March 2025.1

Places

Located inRavensthorpeMt Cattlin is about 4 km from Ravensthorpe.1

Deposit types

An example ofLithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatiteMt Cattlin belongs to the lithium-caesium-tantalum family of deposits.5

Sources

  1. Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2025 Rio Tinto (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2025 Rio Tinto plc (SEC)
  4. WA Battery and Critical Minerals Profile, March 2024 Western Australian Treasury Corporation
  5. Mineral Deposit Models for Resource Assessment, Chapter O: Mineral-Deposit Model for Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum Pegmatites (SIR 2010-5070-O) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Salar de Atacama, Chile, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)).