Chris Ward speaks with Jeremy Wrathall, CEO of Cornish Lithium as the company formally announces the launch of the UK’s first lithium hydroxide demonstration plant at its Trelavour Hard Rock Project site in St. Dennis, Cornwall. The launch paves the way for the extraction of up to 50,000 tonnes of lithium from Cornish granite, set to be used in electric vehicle battery production across the country.
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00:00Jeremy, first of all, thank you for joining me. You're speaking to me live from the Trelever
00:15Hard Rock project in St. Delice, Cornwall, and we're speaking today because Cornish Lithium
00:20has launched the UK's first lithium hydroxide demonstration plant there. Can you talk to
00:26us about the significance of this launch? Thanks, Chris. Yes, it's a hugely significant
00:31day for us and a very significant day for Cornwall and a very significant day for the UK,
00:36because this is the first demonstration-scale lithium hydroxide plant ever built in the UK.
00:45It takes feed from the granite quarry behind us, where there was an old former china clay pit,
00:53and then turns that into lithium hydroxide, which is what goes into
00:58lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles. So it's a soup to nuts, as they say, type of
01:02operation, mine, process, and produce the product from the battery. So really,
01:07really significant day for all of us. Great stuff. Can you provide a little bit of
01:12background about your personal role in getting to this point and potentially bringing lithium
01:17extraction to Cornwall via Cornish Lithium, which is a business that you founded?
01:23So my personal role is, I went to the Campbell School of Mines in Cornwall. That's where I'm
01:29very proud of that. That was my start of my journey in mining, and then went into investment
01:35banking. Most of my career, financing mines all over the world. Had the slightly wacky idea in
01:412006 that we could actually build a lithium industry in Cornwall. That's turned into something
01:47quite amazing, that we can extract lithium from water deep underneath Cornish landscape,
01:54but also extract it from rock in near St Austell. It's nothing particularly new,
02:00interestingly enough. There was a publication in 1987 by the British Geological Survey that
02:05highlighted the lithium potential of the St Austell Brannock. And so all we really are doing
02:10is picking up on that. And we're also standing on the shoulders of the giants who went before us,
02:16the China clay industry, the tin industry, et cetera, et cetera. And it's great in Cornwall
02:20to have all the infrastructure that's necessary, railways, ports, et cetera. So
02:26it's been an amazing journey, and including raising the necessary finance, which has been
02:32an interesting journey. We raised effectively nearly a quarter of a billion dollars last year
02:38in total as a total facility. So great opportunity, and we're making good progress.
02:44It's clear the lithium potential has, like you say, has always been there. But why is
02:51lithium production here in the UK so vital to the country's sort of clean power targets?
02:58I think that that's a multifaceted question. At the moment, we have one of the biggest
03:04geopolitical issues ahead of us is that the move to renewable power and the energy transition
03:10requires renewable power in the form of wind and solar. That needs to be stored in batteries,
03:16and those batteries will be lithium ion batteries, the same with electric car. And if we are
03:22dependent on foreign supplies of that lithium, we are beholden to powers that might not be friendly
03:29in the future. And as we've obviously seen when Russia invaded Ukraine, most of the lithium that
03:35we use in the world today is sourced from China. That's great. Chinese have done a fantastic job
03:44of developing this opportunity of building electric cars. China sold a million electric cars
03:51last month, and electric cars in China are growing like 16% per annum. But at the same time,
03:57we can't be, as a country in the UK, reliant entirely on China for our electric vehicles,
04:04for our battery raw materials, such as lithium. So it really has a powerful economic and geopolitical
04:10aspect to it.
04:12That's really interesting. What is the potential economy of the lithium production there in
04:19Cornwall? How does it match up against some of the other more prolific producers at the moment?
04:28At the moment, we are starting off. We are behind the times in the UK. The government
04:35realises that, especially the new government realises that. But you've got to start with
04:41small steps to start with. You can't be overly ambitious. But we will be able to supply from
04:45the Tralaba project about 10% of the UK's lithium requirements in 2030, at the end of the decade.
04:53But there's another lithium mine being developed in Cornwall by Imris Bridge Lithium,
04:59which is only three miles away from us. There's the Brine opportunity that we're
05:04developing with another 15,000 tonnes. And quickly we get to an ambitious target of 50,000 tonnes,
05:11which is what we're asking the government to mandate as a target for domestic production.
05:16It's exciting times. You've already mentioned the infrastructure is there for
05:25these types of projects. But what are your expectations, ambitions around the job potential?
05:33You've mentioned production levels, both in the short term with the demonstration plant,
05:39which you've launched today, but also looking ahead to the future when I guess Cornish Lithium
05:43is running at full tilt. So the job aspirations that we have at full tilt is about 300 very
05:51highly skilled and, you know, ordinary skills jobs, but 300 jobs. The total value creation
05:59for this region will be about 800 million pounds over the 20 year life of the project.
06:06And also we plan to create more jobs from our Brine operations across Cornwall. So really,
06:11it could be a multi, you know, very highly generative of new jobs and new skills. And also
06:20the spin off benefits from our Brine operations, such as carbon free heat, which can be used for
06:25greenhouses, for heating new towns, etc, etc. So the job creation possibilities are really,
06:33really enormous from this new industry. There are obvious positives to what's going on,
06:41some people will argue that returning to a phase where drilling into the Cornish
06:46landscape becomes a widespread practice again, perhaps has a number of negative outcomes.
06:52And, you know, while the end result is green tech, the practice to get us there can,
06:58you know, we've seen be incredibly damaging to the environment. How do you allay
07:02people's concerns on that front, Jeremy? I think, Chris, we're very heavily regulated
07:07by the Environment Agency, and the local planning authority, and by the UK government.
07:13So for us to be, we are certainly not cavalier about this type of thing. We take this incredibly
07:18responsibly. And when we finish with drill holes, we cut them off. So we're only exploring, so we
07:28do cut them off when we finish with them. But really, this lithium has to come out of the
07:34ground. It has to be dug out. And we're trying to do that with a minimal environmental footprint,
07:40repurposing an old China clay pit, going deeper there, but not damaging the environment any more
07:44than we have to. And so, but unfortunately, lithium doesn't grow on trees, and we need this,
07:54you know, vital new element to power our cars, power our renewable power. Ultimately,
08:00once it's dug out of the ground, it is recyclable. It's recyclable, fully recyclable.
08:05And I think, you know, one thing about metals, which is lithium, obviously, is a metal,
08:10they're infinitely recyclable, can be reused again and again. Once you burn fossil fuels,
08:14they're gone. So this is, you know, we are being very responsible environmentally with what we're
08:20trying to do. It is exciting times for the region. You know, and we know, with the potential
08:29for lithium production down in Cornwall, and we've got Gravity, which is a gigafactory specifically
08:35designed to produce electric vehicle batteries in Somerset coming down the track. You know,
08:43what needs to happen to ensure that, you know, that that sort of supply chain works its way
08:49through the southwest and, you know, it starts in Cornwall and continues into Somerset and,
08:55you know, perhaps goes into vehicles that are built in the Midlands. You know,
08:59there's a clear spine, but there are things that need to be done in order to ensure that
09:06supply chain follows the route that we can all see being carved out.
09:11That's a great point. I mean, I think that the new government, the Labour government,
09:16is absolutely determined that this will be a key sector of the UK economy. We've got the
09:20industrial strategy going to be published fully in March. We've already seen some signs of that,
09:26and that's very much orientated around renewable energy, electric vehicles, etc. So, yes, our
09:32obvious target, we would love to supply our lithium to the Jaguar Land Rover AgriTas battery being
09:37built in Somerset. We, of course, have been in discussions with a number of vehicle manufacturers
09:42here in the UK, including the others like Nissan, etc. We'd love that lithium to stay in the UK,
09:48if possible. And I think really what needs to be done is that the government needs to
09:53up its ambitions even more to, you know, be quarterback this new industry. And I think
10:02that's very clear. The National Wealth Fund has just been created. We are an investment of the
10:07National Wealth Fund through the UK Infrastructure Bank originally, which has now become the National
10:12Wealth Fund. So, really, government is getting on with it. We are way behind in terms of competitors
10:18in the EU, in the US. And obviously, in the US, it's being taken incredibly seriously with the
10:23Inflation Reduction Act, which is $370 billion being put into this type of stuff. But nevertheless,
10:31if we don't start, we're never going to get there. This demonstration part is really
10:35the beginning of that journey to demonstrate that, yes, we can produce lithium here. Yes,
10:40it can go into the UK automotive industry. And if you say about building electric vehicles in
10:46the Midlands, we do hope one day that might even be electric vehicles in the Southwest. You never know.
10:54Yeah, well, fingers crossed. The demonstration plant launch today is obviously significant,
10:59but what now happens off the back of this launch? What are you hoping to
11:05achieve as the first port of call in this road towards the production levels that you're hoping
11:12for in the future? This demonstration plant enables us to produce industrial scale samples
11:17to go to places like Agritust, MegaFactory in Somerset, to go to other automotive companies
11:25around the UK, so they can evaluate the suitability of our material, lithium hydroxide,
11:30which will be battery-gated from here. That also feeds data into our Feasibility Study,
11:36which will be completed in Q2 or H1 next year. That then gives us the ability to go
11:45and finance the construction of the full-scale mine, which is $300 million US. We already have
11:52a lot of that funding from the facility that we negotiated last year, $210 million. So it is the
12:00next step, a very big step for us in the journey of actually proving this works and proving
12:07everything else is commercially viable. A massively important moment for us.