British mining company, Cornish Lithium, has secured investment of GBP53.6m (US$67m).
The funding, led by the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB), was the bank’s inaugural direct equity investment. It would help accelerate mining of battery grade lithium compounds, pivotal to the production of EV batteries.
“This investment supports plans laid out in the government’s critical minerals strategy by improving the UK’s domestic supply of lithium which will help the transition towards net zero while boosting local and regional economic growth,” said UK economic secretary to the Treasury, Andrew Griffith.
According to the Guardian, both the UKIB and the Energy & Minerals Group (EMG) would invest GBP24m each, while TechMet, Cornish Lithium’s largest shareholder, would contribute an additional GBP5.6m, boosting its total investment in the company to GBP30m.
These investments would part of a funding package of GBP168m ($210m).
Cornish Lithium was also targeting an additional GBP6.9m through the sale of shares to small shareholders via Crowdcube.
“This funding will enable us to progress our Trelavour hard rock lithium project to a construction ready status, as well as complete the engineering design work required to build a demonstration scale geothermal waters extraction facility,” said chief executive Jeremy Wrathall.
The company planned to increase workforce from 70 workers to 300 once commercial production was under way.
Cornish Lithium would extract lithium from hard rock in a former china clay pit at Trelavour Downs in Cornwall.
The BBC said it had a production target of 8,000 tonnes a year of battery grade lithium hydroxide.
