After successive high-scoring wins over Brazil, India and ultimately a group of China’s high-cost iron ore producers in the steel materials “group of death” at the 2014 Mining World Cup, Australia was widely expected to also be competitive in the higher-priced commodities rounds of the global mineral production tournament.

Unfortunately for late-night Australian mining fans closely watching the mine-supply numbers, the Australian mining team, affectionately known as the “Diggeroos”, suffered an early exit from the tournament in the critical high-value commodities second-round qualifiers.

Losses to both Indonesia and to Kazakhstan in the nickel and uranium rounds of the tournament were both characterised by heavy defeats.

The precious metals gold-plate play-off round also saw defeat for Australia, despite reaching the final, this time at the hands of China’s gold miners with the Diggeroos finishing as runners-up in the gold-plate competition.

Diggeroo coach Ange Macfarlane was at a loss to explain the lack of growth in Australia’s key export numbers, particularly in established industries such as nickel and uranium over the last decade.

“Perhaps we focused too much on the iron ore sector where we have blitzed all-comers,” Macfarlane said.

“The nickel and uranium numbers don’t lie and they don’t look all that good for Australia either.

“As for gold, we have been hearing from exploration pundits for a while that the golden generation of Australian operating mines has now reached a mature stage: we desperately need new gold discoveries there to compete with China’s continually emerging assets.”

Strictly Boardroom looked back at some key historical results achieved by the Australian mining sector in the glory days of the past in order to place the latest defeats in context.

Nickel: in 2003 Australia posted some 186,000 tonnes of annual nickel production, easily beating Indonesia’s 144,000t of production that year and also eclipsing a young team from the Philippines that managed only a modest 23,000t of nickel production.

In the latest 2013 annual production round, however, while Australia posted a material gain to reach 238,000t nickel, the Diggeroos lost out to their Asian group competitors.

Despite a creditable 28% production gain over the last decade, Australian miners did not bank on a phenomenal performance from both Indonesian and Philippines nickel producers.

Indeed, it was Indonesia first, daylight second.

In 2013, Indonesia notched up 750,000t of contained nickel production.

For the record, the Philippines also beat Australia in 2013 posting more than 300,000t for the year.

Suddenly Australia’s scoreline looks less impressive.

Coach Ange Macfarlane commented that the Diggeroos were keenly awaiting the age qualification of a talented new nickel player from Western Australia – currently undergoing late-stage trials (feasibility) with the highly successful Sirius Resources’ management team.

Uranium: in 2003 Australia posted a credible 8900t annual uranium production, recording a handsome margin over Namibia at 2400t and also over Kazakhstan at 3470t that year.

Fast-forward to 2013, however, and Australia’s production had not increased – indeed had returned to only around 7900t.

In contrast both Namibia and Kazakhstan have both made strong gains bringing on new uranium production.

Namibia is emerging as a serious competitor to Australia, now breaching the 5000t production threshold in 2013.

As for Kazakhstan, the country’s success story as a uranium producer is second to none in recent years. Kazakhstan’s 27,000t of uranium production handsomely won the most recent global mine-supply tournament.

Coach Ange Macfarlane remains hopeful of resurgence in Australia’s uranium discovery and production track record.

With larger uranium production from Olympic Dam currently ruled out through price-induced injury in the near-term, Macfarlane is hoping for new generation uranium discoveries elsewhere across Australia.

Good luck to the Diggeroos in the 2018 Mining World Cup: the preparation starts now.

Good hunting.

Allan Trench is a professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and Research professor (value and risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, a non-executive director of several resource sector companies and the Perth representative for CRU Consulting, a division of independent metals & mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).