Billionaire Andrew Forrest’s mining company Fortescue has applied for exploration leases covering more than 7000 square kilometres of land in Western Australia’s south in the hunt for critical mineral deposits.

The tenements largely cover farming areas from Gnowangerup in the Great Southern to Ravensthorpe in the Goldfields-Esperance region.

Fortescue is the fourth-largest iron ore producer in the world but has held ambitions in other minerals like lithium for Australian exploration for several years but without much luck in finding new deposits.

The company’s lithium search has previously centred around the Pilbara, but four exploration leases were applied for in March near Bridgetown and the Greenbushes mine – which is the world’s largest hard rock lithium operation.

A further 20 tenements were applied for this month near Ravensthorpe which has existing lithium, nickel and tantalum mines.

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The Australian government considers 26 commodities to be critical minerals including lithium and tantalum.

A lot of critical minerals are needed to manufacture the batteries used in electric vehicles and for long-term storage.

The amount of expenditure on exploration for battery minerals in WA increased by 62 per cent in 2021 to $627 million, while sales increased 48 per cent to $9.3 billion in the same year.