Australia orders China-linked investors to exit Northern Minerals stakes

Australia ordered six shareholders to sell out of Northern Minerals, tightening its grip on a rare earths company at the center of a broader contest over defense supply chains, electric-vehicle magnets and industrial sovereignty. Treasurer Jim Chalmers issued the divestment order on May 18, and the holders were given two weeks to unwind their stakes.

Northern Minerals is trying to build a domestic source of dysprosium and terbium through its Browns Range Heavy Rare Earths Project in Western Australia’s East Kimberley, about 160 km southeast of Halls Creek. The company says the Wolverine deposit there is the highest known-grade dysprosium and terbium deposit in Australia, a distinction that matters because dysprosium helps magnets retain strength at high temperatures, making it essential in motors and precision equipment.

The latest order extends a campaign that began in 2024, when Chalmers issued disposal orders against five foreign investors. Those orders required the sale of 613,573,632 shares, or about 10.4% of Northern Minerals’ issued capital, and were published on the Federal Register of Legislation on June 3, 2024. Treasury said the foreign investment framework reforms announced that year were meant to make the system stronger, faster and more transparent while still protecting national security.

The Northern Minerals case also became the first Treasurer-initiated Federal Court action over an alleged breach of Australia’s foreign investment laws. Treasury later said the Federal Court ordered Indian Ocean International Shipping and Service Company Ltd and Jing Tian to pay $14 million in penalties in 2025, underscoring that Canberra’s response was not just rhetorical but enforcement-driven.

The policy shift reflects a wider trend among allied governments that increasingly treat critical minerals as strategic assets rather than ordinary commodities. The International Energy Agency has said China is the leading refiner for 19 of 20 strategic minerals, and its Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 warned that concentration risks had intensified, with China supplying about 90% of growth from the top single supplier in key mineral chains. Against that backdrop, ownership in a rare earths developer in Western Australia has become part of a larger industrial-security calculation, not simply a market transaction.