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.
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