Lithium miner aims for hard rock gig in Cornwall

A project to start mining lithium in Cornwall has taken another step towards the start of commercial production, which it claims could provide more than a tenth of the lithium needed for British industry by the end of the decade.
Cornish Lithium has opened a plant to demonstrate its lithium extraction technology at a former China clay pit near St Austell, where it hopes to mine the battery metal.
The demonstration plant is a smaller version of the full-scale commercial mine it hopes to bring on line in 2027. The facility takes lithium-enriched granite that has been mined from the pit and processes it to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
The company is hoping to produce about 10,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide at battery-grade from the Trelavour Hard Rock Project, a rate that could be sustained for about 20 years. The demonstration will feed into the feasibility study being carried out by the company, ahead of taking a final investment decision on the scheme before the end of next year.
A separate project to extract lithium from geothermal waters near Redruth is also planned, which the company thinks could produce about 15,000 tonnes a year and cost in the “tens of millions” to develop, according to Jeremy Wrathall, founder and chief executive of Cornish Lithium.
If brought to fruition, the project would create about 300 jobs over its lifetime and generate about £800 million in value for the local economy.
The mine will help establish a domestic supply of the key battery ingredient, which is currently being imported into the UK.
The demonstration plant has been funded by the £53.6 million package from the UK Infrastructure Bank, now the National Wealth Fund, along with EMG, an American private equity group, and £5.6 million from TechMet, an existing investor, agreed last year. That was alongside a £5.1 million crowdfunding from smaller investors. In 2021, the company had also raised about £12 million through crowdfunding from about 5,500 individuals, including about a thousand in Cornwall.
At the end of May the company had cash and equivalents of £14 million with access to further funding of about £22.5 million.
“We have adequate funding to run the demonstration plant, to get through to feasibility study and beyond,” Wrathall said.
The three investors have the option to invest an additional £168 million of second-stage financing, including about £70 million from National Wealth Fund.
The cost of building the commercial mine is estimated at $300 million, or about £231 million, a gap the company hopes to bridge with project finance debt and or securing a supply agreement with a car manufacturer in exchange for financing.
“People ask us who is our ideal off-take financing company. Well, Jaguar Land Rover/Tata Agratas are building a big 40MW battery plant two hours’ drive from us,” Wrathall said, referring to the gigafactory being built in Somerset.
In June last year, Cornish Lithium had warned that its future was in doubt unless it could secure extra funds in just weeks.
It generated a loss of £8.8 million last year, up from £7.5 million in 2022, although it hoped to turn a profit by 2027 or 2028, Wrathall said.
The company’s projects “are still in their early stages with new, highly innovative and unproven technologies being developed to execute its business plan”, its directors note in the latest annual report, adding: “There can be no assurance that the scale-up of these technologies will be successful in the commercial context of the group.”
An IPO in London had been mooted in 2022, something that the company is “still actively looking at”, according to Wrathall, although current market conditions are “not conducive to a listing”.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business and trade secretary, said: “This is great news for Cornish Lithium, and will not only support high-skilled jobs in the southwest but give a major boost to our critical minerals supply chains for the long term,” adding that lithium would be vital to the automotive sector’s transition towards electric vehicles.