Mineral Cosmetics Australia

East coast flush with green

Ray Merchant is a colour-blind geologist hunting for a green stone.

The stone is glauconite, a source of potassium, the K in New Zealand farming's essential NPK fertiliser trinity.

Merchant is a seasoned minerals hunter with the previously little-known zeolite to his credit. He and a colleague found a hill of zeolite, a soft absorbent silicate mineral, near Rotorua and began mining it in 1992. It quickly took over the kitty litter market and he is now expanding into hand and skin cleaners with hopes of entering the cosmetics and pharmaceuticals markets.

He turned his attention to glauconite in 2008 when world fertiliser prices spiked as demand for commodity foods suddenly rose. They fell in the global recession two years later but have since begun to rise again.

So far, his search has proved successful, with big deposits being located on the east coasts of both islands.

He is convinced enough glauconite exists to eliminate the need to import much of the potassium salts used in fertiliser - 120,000 tonnes a year on average over the past decade costing more than $50 million a year.

However, fertiliser companies say potassium, sold as potash, is still so cheap on the world market it is not worth starting a local industry.

But Merchant warns the world's biggest potash mines in Canada, Belarus and Russia are in the hands of a price cartel that is controlling the market.

Added to that is growing demand from China and India, which take half of the world's $20 billion-a-year potash trade. "The New Zealand farmer can expect to pay more as time passes, and even more if supply lines are disrupted," he says.

He thinks that as a protective strategy a start should be made on locating the best glauconite deposits and on laboratory studies, to be followed by a pilot plant and fertiliser trials.

"It's sitting there. It won't cost a lot to evaluate it - just the commitment, enthusiasm and funding," he says.

Finding the green mineral has tested him physically. He has what he describes as a "munted" back from falls down rocky hillsides as a young geologist which now makes climbing hills extremely painful.

And he is colour-blind - green appears as grey.

He relies on wife Raema to transport him around and to be his eyes in the search for glauconite. "It hasn't stopped my thirst, my passion, for finding and using our native resources, though," he says.

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Parliamentary debates, House of Representatives, weekly Hansard

Industrial minerals

Australian national bibliography

Handbook of green chemicals

2008 Year Book Australia No. 90