The value of tailings is not trapped in the material; it is trapped in the system surrounding it.

Queensland’s Bowen and Surat Basins are among the world’s most productive coal regions, generating more than 224 million tonnes of coal annually, supporting 27,000 jobs, delivering $45.8 billion in export value, and contributing $5.5 billion in royalties.

Yet alongside this economic value sits another resource stream hiding in plain sight.

Every year, millions of tonnes of coal tailings are generated through coal preparation processes and deposited into tailings storage facilities. Historically treated as waste, these materials have accumulated as long-term liabilities requiring ongoing management, monitoring, and closure investment.

This project began with a bold hypothesis:
Can the full volume of Queensland’s coal tailings be transformed from a liability into a full value resource?

To test this hypothesis, tailings were assessed across a range of technical, commercial and systems criteria.

The findings reveal that coal tailings indeed contain multiple forms of recoverable value. However, they also reveal that achieving full value from full volume requires fundamentally different thinking compared to traditional resource recovery approaches.

Queensland has spent decades building a system that maximises value from coal.

The next opportunity is to build a system that maximises value from everything coal leaves behind.