Cornish Lithium receives £53M investment to develop domestic lithium supply

Cornish Valleys, Cornwall, UK (source: flickr/ Jack Pease, creative commons)

UK-based mineral exploration company Cornish Lithium has secured £53 million (approx. USD 67 million) in investment from the UK Infrastructure Bank along with the Energy and Minerals Group (EMG) and TechMet. The investors also have the option of making a £168 million second-stage investment.

Although this investment will primarily go towards the extraction of hard rock lithium from a kaolin pit at Trevalour Downs, the company intends to allocate a portion of it to the engineering design of a demonstration-scale geothermal lithium extraction facility.

At a previous geothermal industry panel meeting, Cornish Lithium founder and CEO Jeremy Wrathall stated that the geothermal waters in lithium can potentially supply all of the lithium demand of the UK, corresponding to around 80,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent by 2030.

“Our investment… will greatly accelerate domestic production of a mineral which is critical to the future of EV battery production and decarbonisation of the transport sector,” said John Flint of the UK Infrastructure Bank.

Cornish Lithium had previously drilled two research boreholes in the Gwennap area in Cornwall, and is expected to have already completed the drilling of another exploration borehole at the Blackwater site.

Source: BBC