Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers has ordered another six companies to divest their holdings in Northern Minerals within the next two weeks, escalating Canberra’s control over ownership of a rare earths mining company as concerns grow that Chinese-backed investors are trying to seize control.
Who Gets Ordered Around
The six investors named in the order are Hong Kong Ying Tak Ltd, Real International Resources Ltd, Qogir Trading & Service Co Ltd, Chuanyou Cong, Vastness Investment Group Ltd and Zhongxiong Lin. Together, they hold around 17 per cent of the company. The order gives them two weeks to sell, a deadline handed down from above rather than negotiated with the people whose shares and livelihoods are caught in the middle.
A spokesman for Mr Chalmers said the decision was entirely consistent with advice from Treasury and the Foreign Investment Review Board and was about protecting the national interest and ensuring compliance with the foreign investment framework. The spokesman said, "We operate a robust and non-discriminatory foreign investment framework, and will take further action if required to protect our national interest in relation to this matter."
That language of “framework” and “national interest” is the official varnish on a familiar hierarchy: the state decides who may own what, who must sell, and whose capital is acceptable when strategic assets are on the line.
The Third Intervention
This is the government’s third intervention over ownership concerns tied to Chinese-linked investors in Northern Minerals. In 2023, Mr Chalmers blocked a Chinese-linked investment vehicle, Yuxiao Fund, from increasing its stake in the company, and in 2024 he ordered another five China-linked companies to divest from it. Earlier this year, the Foreign Investment Review Board wrote to Northern Minerals saying it believed three of the blocked investors had breached that order by transferring their shares to Hong Kong Ying Tak Ltd, one of the six companies ordered to divest today.
Northern Minerals has delayed its annual meeting as it tries to resolve the identity of its shareholders. The company has entered a trading halt and said in a statement to the ASX that it was currently considering the treasurer’s orders and would make a further announcement once it had done so. The ABC said it had tried to contact the six investors ordered to divest their shares but had so far been unable to reach any of them.
The company is trying to develop its Browns Range Heavy Rare Earths Project in the East Kimberley, with hopes of producing large quantities of dysprosium and terbium, which are critical elements for the magnets used for military, computing and clean energy technologies. It operates the Browns Range mine in Western Australia and the Browns Range pilot plant is located in the remote East Kimberley near the Northern Territory border.
Strategic Minerals, Strategic Control
Northern Minerals is also seen as a key player in efforts by both the United States and Australia to break China's stranglehold on the critical minerals supply chain and is already on track for about $500 million in funding from the Export Import Bank of the United States. The money and the mineral supply chain sit inside a larger contest between states and investors, with the company’s ownership becoming another battleground for economic security and strategic competition.
One of the Chinese investors ordered to sell its shares, the Beijing-based Vastness Investment Group, tried to topple the company’s chairman before abandoning its bid earlier this year. That detail shows the struggle over the company has not been limited to paperwork and ministerial orders, but has also played out through attempts to reshape control from within.
John Coyne from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said the government "appears to have concluded" that several China-based investors have "ignored repeated direction, and it has acted accordingly and appropriately". He said, "It sends an important signal that Australia is far more willing to use investment policy as a tool of economic security." Dr Coyne also said, "Australia has been very clear for several years that critical minerals are no longer simply a commercial issue. They now sit at the centre of strategic competition, industrial resilience and economic security."
The result is a company caught between state power, foreign capital, and a supply chain prized for military, computing and clean energy technologies. The people at the bottom of that arrangement are not the ones issuing the orders.