On July 8th, the Department for Energy and Mining, South Australia and Unearthed announced the 5 winners of the Thinking Critical South Australia challenge.

Launched back in November 2021, Thinking Critical South Australia was an exciting open innovation initiative brought to you by the South Australian Government in partnership with Unearthed.

With the aim to attract the best and brightest minds from across the globe to South Australia, this challenge was firmly focused on boosting the already burgeoning critical minerals ecosystem in South Australia, helping to establish a world-class critical minerals hub.

Receiving worldwide attention, Thinking Critical South Australia engaged a vast global audience of innovators, attracting over 200 challenge participants from 31 countries, and generating 40 unique and interesting proposals for South Australia.

Following Round 1, the selected judging panel took on the difficult task of whittling this fantastic pool of proposals to 11 shortlisted teams, who were subsequently challenged to develop their proposal plans.

Their efforts and those of all our participants, judges and incentive partners has culminated in the exciting announcement of the 5 deserving finalists who will each receive their share of the fantastic $250,000 prize pool and valuable incentives from our partners, to help establish their businesses and ideas in South Australia.

Congratulations to the 5 winning teams and thank you to everyone that has been involved in this challenge.

In particular, Thank you to our amazing incentive partners who will be supplying our winning finalists with critical support to help them establish themselves in South Australia:

• Department for Trade and Investment
• AusIMM
• Austmine
• CORE
• HughesPR
• IMARC
• University of Adelaide and
• UniSA