The Australian lead-zinc industry faces a future in which the world market is likely to show at best only minimal growth and in which there will be increasing competition. Its production facilities use mature technologies employing expensive labour and increasingly costly energy in a country which demands the highest standards of environmental performance. Returns on investment are already unsatisfactory._x000D_
Technology for survival would appear to indicate a need not only for more efficient capital, labour and energy usage combined with improved environmental performance, but also flexibility to handle more complex materials than the traditional, virtually single metal concentrates. This offers the potential for improved overall economics from the mine onwards, but will demand efficient separation and by-product recovery processes._x000D_
In the lead industry these problems are being addressed in several emerging technologies. With zinc, the situation is less clear.