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Mines/Australia

Wodgina mine

Wodgina mine, Australia. Producing, open pit, mining lithium, tantalum.

Why Wodgina is famous

Western Australian hard-rock lithium mine, 50% Albemarle and 50% Mineral Resources through MARBL. Idled in 2019 and restarted in the second quarter of 2022. USGS says the mine was placed on care and maintenance in 2020 and that the joint venture announced a restart in late 2021. Since the October 2023 restructuring Albemarle and Mineral Resources each own 50 per cent, and Mineral Resources runs the mine.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 2022Wodgina lithium mine restarts5

What kind of deposit

Lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatite

Wodgina today

Where lithium is mined todayWhere tantalum is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

Sources

  1. Form 10-K for the year ended 31 December 2025 Albemarle Corporation (SEC)
  2. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  3. Form 10-K for 2025 Albemarle Corporation (SEC)
  4. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Australia (advance release) US Geological Survey
  5. WA Battery and Critical Minerals Profile, March 2024 Western Australian Treasury Corporation
  6. 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)).