Could Cornwall get a slice of the lithium revolution?

In 1746 the English pharmacist William Cookworthy helped stop the importation of Chinese porcelain by discovering deposits of the world’s best clay in Cornwall.

Three centuries later, a region of south-west England is trying to revive its decaying mining sector in a bid to protect the UK from Chinese imports of another vital commodity: lithium.

The hope is that Cornwall, better known for its beaches and surfing, will become a center for the production of a key component in the electric car revolution in the UK. But in the “Cornish Alps”, angular mountains made of clay mining waste, success rests on a handful of developers struggling to secure capital.

Leading the charge are Cornish Lithium, a mineral exploration start-up seeking to raise a large funding package, and Imerys British Lithium, a £575mn joint project between French clay mining company Imerys and extraction group British Lithium .

Both groups face a difficult path to securing financing and delivering commercially unproven technologies for extracting lithium from the ground to produce the chemical compounds that go into EV batteries.

However, if successful, the rewards can be huge. “It’s like standing in the Stone Age and looking back at the Bronze Age,” said Jeremy Rathall, chief executive of Cornish Lithium.

He believes the “granite kingdom”, as Cornwall is known, could play a role in this switch with the potential to become a national lithium hub and a link in Europe’s electric car supply chain.

“Mining is in Cornwall’s DNA,” Wrathall said, speaking from a disused clay processing site that the company plans to convert into a lithium plant.

“This is not just a program or a project,” said Andrew Smith, director of British Lithium. “It’s an industry born in the UK.”

According to Rathall, although Cornwall will never produce anything near the supply of the world’s largest lithium producers in Australia, Chile and China, it has relative advantages.

It has a homogenous resource, with lithium dispersed evenly throughout the rock. It can rely on local communities familiar with mining, direct access to granite with the soil layer already removed through previous extraction and existing infrastructure.

This includes railways and unused processing plants to help reduce transportation costs and avoid planning red tape.

“If there’s lithium here and there’s a history of mining, why wouldn’t we look at it?” Rathall said.

Cornish Lithium and Emerys British Lithium aim to extract lithium from mica, a shiny mineral found in granite beneath layers of soil, before moving it to nearby plants to produce battery-grade lithium .

This would differ from the two main current extraction methods, which involve evaporating brine in Chile and crushing hard rock from Australia containing a mineral called spodumene for processing in China.

Cornish Lithium believes its $244 million project can generate about 7,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) per year from the end of 2026. Emery’s British Lithium aims to produce 20,000 tonnes by 2028.

It will play only a small role in meeting global demand, forecast by Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, to grow to 3.7 million tonnes by 2030. But according to the UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre, it would only partially cover the UK’s 80,000 tonnes of electric car needs.

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The Cornish mica method can be less carbon intensive than others. Lithium can be separated without heating the ore to more than 1,000C, as has to be done with hard Australian rocks. There are low emissions from Chilean brine but there are concerns about water availability.

Producing mica-based lithium can cost more than Australia’s hard rock method, which generates about half the world’s supply because of the low concentration of lithium in the rock. It is also of a lower grade than the chili brine.

But Rathall says the Cornish technology has potential, pointing out that Chinese battery maker CATL is also developing a mica-based project in the Jianxiao field.

“The Chinese are the best metallurgical innovators on the planet,” Rathall said. “They’re going to be mining lithium mica, which tells you it’s actually quite a smart thing to do.”

Wrathall’s company also has ambitions to extract lithium from mineral-rich geothermal water flowing from cracks in non-permeable granite near the village of Blackwater.

This provides Rathall’s business with another extraction method, using the drilling and fluid pumping techniques of the oil and gas industry instead of traditional mining techniques.

However, like the mica method, the separation of lithium from water using filters, beads, and membranes is an unproven technology on a commercial scale.

“Technology is different in Cornwall in all respects. “Opening any mine is always a huge research and innovation project,” said Professor Francis Wall, Camborne School of Mining. “It’s that and more.”

The untested nature of extraction could prove problematic for fundraising, especially as lithium prices have fallen 44 percent to $42,000 a tonne this year after China slashed subsidies on electric cars.

Analysts say state support for mining projects may remain minimal under a Conservative government. Every Cornish project has received less than £10 million in public funding.

In contrast, France has created a €2 billion public-private critical minerals fund and the US has provided $1.4 billion in grants to eight lithium supply chain projects, covering nearly 40 percent of total development costs.

“The technologies are relatively risky, so a private venture would struggle to stand alone,” said Alessandro Daza, chief executive of Emerys.

However, five active drills at Cornish Lithium’s sites suggest there is no imminent cash crunch, as auditors warned £10 million would be needed by the end of this month to maintain operations.

Brian Meynell, chief executive of Ireland-based Techmate, Cornish Lithium’s largest shareholder, said the company was working to secure funding for its feasibility study.

“We are in the advanced stages of finalizing a major funding structure,” he said. “Cornwall will become a major producer of lithium battery chemicals over the next five years.”

In 1746 the English pharmacist William Cookworthy helped stop the importation of Chinese porcelain by discovering deposits of the world’s best clay in Cornwall.

Three centuries later, a region of south-west England is trying to revive its decaying mining sector in a bid to protect the UK from Chinese imports of another vital commodity: lithium.

The hope is that Cornwall, better known for its beaches and surfing, will become a center for the production of a key component in the electric car revolution in the UK. But in the “Cornish Alps”, angular mountains made of clay mining waste, success rests on a handful of developers struggling to secure capital.

Leading the charge are Cornish Lithium, a mineral exploration start-up seeking to raise a large funding package, and Imerys British Lithium, a £575mn joint project between French clay mining company Imerys and extraction group British Lithium .

Both groups face a difficult path to securing financing and delivering commercially unproven technologies for extracting lithium from the ground to produce the chemical compounds that go into EV batteries.

However, if successful, the rewards can be huge. “It’s like standing in the Stone Age and looking back at the Bronze Age,” said Jeremy Rathall, chief executive of Cornish Lithium.

He believes the “granite kingdom”, as Cornwall is known, could play a role in this switch with the potential to become a national lithium hub and a link in Europe’s electric car supply chain.

“Mining is in Cornwall’s DNA,” Wrathall said, speaking from a disused clay processing site that the company plans to convert into a lithium plant.

“This is not just a program or a project,” said Andrew Smith, director of British Lithium. “It’s an industry born in the UK.”

According to Rathall, although Cornwall will never produce anything near the supply of the world’s largest lithium producers in Australia, Chile and China, it has relative advantages.

It has a homogenous resource, with lithium dispersed evenly throughout the rock. It can rely on local communities familiar with mining, direct access to granite with the soil layer already removed through previous extraction and existing infrastructure.

This includes railways and unused processing plants to help reduce transportation costs and avoid planning red tape.

“If there’s lithium here and there’s a history of mining, why wouldn’t we look at it?” Rathall said.

Cornish Lithium and Emerys British Lithium aim to extract lithium from mica, a shiny mineral found in granite beneath layers of soil, before moving it to nearby plants to produce battery-grade lithium .

This would differ from the two main current extraction methods, which involve evaporating brine in Chile and crushing hard rock from Australia containing a mineral called spodumene for processing in China.

Cornish Lithium believes its $244 million project can generate about 7,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) per year from the end of 2026. Emery’s British Lithium aims to produce 20,000 tonnes by 2028.

It will play only a small role in meeting global demand, forecast by Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, to grow to 3.7 million tonnes by 2030. But according to the UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre, it would only partially cover the UK’s 80,000 tonnes of electric car needs.

You are viewing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is probably due to being offline or JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

The Cornish mica method can be less carbon intensive than others. Lithium can be separated without heating the ore to more than 1,000C, as has to be done with hard Australian rocks. There are low emissions from Chilean brine but there are concerns about water availability.

Producing mica-based lithium can cost more than Australia’s hard rock method, which generates about half the world’s supply because of the low concentration of lithium in the rock. It is also of a lower grade than the chili brine.

But Rathall says the Cornish technology has potential, pointing out that Chinese battery maker CATL is also developing a mica-based project in the Jianxiao field.

“The Chinese are the best metallurgical innovators on the planet,” Rathall said. “They’re going to be mining lithium mica, which tells you it’s actually quite a smart thing to do.”

Wrathall’s company also has ambitions to extract lithium from mineral-rich geothermal water flowing from cracks in non-permeable granite near the village of Blackwater.

This provides Rathall’s business with another extraction method, using the drilling and fluid pumping techniques of the oil and gas industry instead of traditional mining techniques.

However, like the mica method, the separation of lithium from water using filters, beads, and membranes is an unproven technology on a commercial scale.

“Technology is different in Cornwall in all respects. “Opening any mine is always a huge research and innovation project,” said Professor Francis Wall, Camborne School of Mining. “It’s that and more.”

The untested nature of extraction could prove problematic for fundraising, especially as lithium prices have fallen 44 percent to $42,000 a tonne this year after China slashed subsidies on electric cars.

Analysts say state support for mining projects may remain minimal under a Conservative government. Every Cornish project has received less than £10 million in public funding.

In contrast, France has created a €2 billion public-private critical minerals fund and the US has provided $1.4 billion in grants to eight lithium supply chain projects, covering nearly 40 percent of total development costs.

“The technologies are relatively risky, so a private venture would struggle to stand alone,” said Alessandro Daza, chief executive of Emerys.

However, five active drills at Cornish Lithium’s sites suggest there is no imminent cash crunch, as auditors warned £10 million would be needed by the end of this month to maintain operations.

Brian Meynell, chief executive of Ireland-based Techmate, Cornish Lithium’s largest shareholder, said the company was working to secure funding for its feasibility study.

“We are in the advanced stages of finalizing a major funding structure,” he said. “Cornwall will become a major producer of lithium battery chemicals over the next five years.”