Lithium mining in Western Australia: the 6 operating sites and who runs them

Ask how many lithium mines are operating in Australia and most lists will tell you seven or eight. The verified answer, as of June 2026, is six. And every one of them is in Western Australia.

Here they are — parent company, operating entity, and GPS coordinates, each ownership assignment verified against a primary source.

Why most lists get the number wrong

Two sites keep appearing on "operating" lists that shouldn't: Bald Hill in WA and Finniss in the Northern Territory. Both were placed into care and maintenance during the lithium price downturn. They are real mines, they may restart, but they are not producing — and if you sell consumables, labour, or fleet into operating sites, a mothballed mine is a wasted call.

We exclude them rather than footnote them. A dataset that quietly counts non-producing sites as operating is how a sales team ends up pitching an empty camp. When the status changes, the file changes.

The operator is rarely the name you know

The parent/operator split shows up clearly in lithium. Mount Marion is a Mineral Resources mine — but the operating entity is Reed Industrial Minerals Pty Ltd, a name that appears on almost no prospect list. Pilgangoora belongs to Pilbara Minerals, operated through Pilgangoora Operations Pty Ltd. Wodgina sits under US-listed Albemarle Corporation, operating locally as Albemarle Wodgina Pty Ltd.

If your CRM only carries the parent, your rep can't match the entity on a site induction form, a tender portal, or a purchase order. If it only carries the operator, your pitch never reaches the level where the budget sits. You need both. Our file carries both, on every row.

Where they actually are

Six mines, one state — but spread across 1,400 km of it:

• Pilgangoora and Wodgina sit within about 25 km of each other in the Pilbara, inland from Port Hedland
• Kathleen Valley is in the northern Goldfields, between Leinster and Wiluna
• Mount Marion is just southwest of Kalgoorlie
• Mount Holland is in the Forrestania region, south of Southern Cross
• Greenbushes is the outlier — in the South West timber country, roughly 250 km from Perth, the only major lithium operation anywhere near a capital city

That geography matters commercially. Five of the six are remote FIFO operations with the labour hire, camp services, fuel, and logistics demand that comes with that. Greenbushes runs differently — residential workforce, sealed road access, a different procurement profile entirely.

Who sells into these six

Lithium is a small slice of the 349 operating mine sites in our database — gold has 103 sites, coal 99, iron ore 60. But these six punch above their weight for suppliers: hard-rock spodumene operations run continuous drill-and-blast, crushing, and dense media separation, which means steady demand for explosives, grinding media, reagents, mobile fleet, tyres, and specialist maintenance — concentrated in the hands of just six operator entities.

Six sites is a list a single BD rep can work in a week. Knowing exactly which six — and which entity signs at each — is the whole game.