Why lithium is set to revive Cornwall’s mining heritage

Some people call them the St Austell Alps.

Just outside that Cornish town lie the vast white, scarred open cast mines of a china clay industry, which is now long past its heyday.

But something is stirring.

These pits contain some of the most important reserves of lithium in Europe, and a number of companies are now poised to exploit that. There has been much excitement, talk of a new gold rush, of Cornwall becoming to lithium what Saudi Arabia is to oil. Of course, much of this is overblown, but the potential is real.

Speaking today to the boss of one of the lithium mining companies, he is talking big. He says the amount of precious lithium vital for electric vehicle batteries will be enough for the UK not to be dependent upon China.

That parallel works like this. Just as wind generation scaled up, meaning the UK would no longer be dependent upon the likes of Putin for gas, so the production of lithium means we do not need to import from China. Clearly, investors are putting their money where this company’s mouth is, and they hope to have commercial, scaled up production by 2027.

The government has already green lighted this as a priority development for our national infrastructure, speeding up planning red tape. Happily enough, a gigafactory for the production of batteries for electric vehicles is in the pipeline for the West Country as well. So much of what is needed is, in fact, already here.

The large, china clay pits mean you basically already have the large hole that you need. You can now make that hole bigger, wider, deeper to get at the granite that lies underneath and those black flecks that you get in granite are where the lithium is.

Separate that out, and you have the road to green electric vehicle production free from the dominance of China. Not only that, they even have a railway line already in place for the old china clay mine. That further reduces the amount of building, the amount of infrastructure going into this project.

Moreover, production of lithium here does not mean roasting or heating the product in order to produce your lithium. Instead, the granite is first crushed then subjected to chemicals which separate out the lithium contained in mica.

The mica is then subjected to further chemicals like sulphuric acid and after that, you get something which looks just like table salt. But in fact, this is production grade material for the lithium that goes into a host of things, from mobile phones right through, of course, to electric vehicle batteries.

Of course, globally, this may not make a great deal of difference. China will still dominate, because it has been so far ahead in gaining access and ownership and production of lithium across global sites, and thus controlling production. It is also true that countries in Africa, South America and Australia will continue to dominate because of their greater reserves of lithium.

That said, the deposits of this precious substance in Cornwall are of genuine commercial significance, and that will play well into the ever fraught economics of British car manufacture, particularly electric vehicle manufacture, and our ability to penetrate European markets for those vehicles in a post Brexit world with significant government backing. The great and the good, as well as the media, are being welcomed this week to view what is the largest such production facility in the world.

What needs to happen now is for it to be scaled up to full production capacity. But the know-how and the expertise is in place, as is the investment from all over the world.

It’s an example where the UK’s natural resources place us at great advantage, like having so much sea as island nations and therefore capacity for wind turbine generation.

But it is also a happy tale of technical know-how in place, cutting edge and world leading, and because the production here relies on chemicals rather than heating or roasting the raw materials, the overall carbon footprint is also significantly reduced.

There is also the matter of several 100 highly skilled jobs and hundreds more in the wider dependent economy. This is no detail in what for many years now, has been one of the poorest counties in the UK.

So no, Cornwall will not be any Saudi Arabia, of course. Green revolution is probably overstating things, but this investment and production has absolutely come at the right time for UK PLC. It’s also the right place in terms of the UK economy and provides opportunities in a place where, however beautiful it has become, and perhaps overly dependent on tourism, does have a mining heritage, from tin to china clay – and now, lithium.