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 The Tasmanian Government has assumed a caretaker role ahead of the election for the Tasmanian House of Assembly. It is important during this time that Tasmanian Government resources are not used to communicate political material. As such, no political or election material will be placed on this site.

Mineral Resources Tasmania

Exploration

Mineral Resources Tasmania encourages private sector exploration, by providing geoscientific information on areas of high mineral resource potential and by maintaining accessible data and drill core derived from past exploration.

Despite its small size of 68 000 square kilometres, Tasmania has a remarkable geological diversity and abundance of rich and high-grade mineral deposits.

Rocks from every period of the Earth's history from the Late Proterozoic are present in the State, and there have been at least four major episodes of economic mineralisation. Significant mineral deposits include Proterozoic iron ore, silica, dolomite and magnesite; Cambrian VHMS-gold and ultramafic-related platinum group minerals (PGM) and chromite; Devonian granite-related tin-tungsten and silver-lead-zinc deposits; Devonian slate-belt gold deposits; Triassic and Tertiary coal deposits; and Cainozoic alluvial gold, tin and PGMs, and residual iron oxide, silica and clay.

Exploration Release Areas

MRT runs an ERA system designed to encourage exploration programs standing the best chance of discovering and developing the new mineral deposits needed to sustain the Tasmanian mining industry. An ERA is created after ground is made newly available for exploration. Current ERA's are listed here.

MRT helping promote exploration

MRT promotes exploration by the provision of precompetitive geoscientific information, in order to enhance the prospectivity of under-explored areas, reduce exploration risk, and to promote new exploration strategies in the state's most prospective areas.