- UK-based mineral exploration firm, Cornish Lithium, has opened a demonstrative plant to produce lithium hydroxide, as part of its Trelavour Hard Rock project.
- The site is set to confirm the economic viability of both lithium extraction and production, within the UK.
- Currently, the UK relies exclusively on foreign imports of lithium material, which is where this project is a key step in giving the UK more independence in its green transition.
UK-based lithium extraction and production enters a pilot phase
With the growth in electric vehicles, lithium, a key material in EV batteries, will become ever more in demand in the UK. The country is expected to require around 110,000 tonnes of lithium by 2030, yet the country still imports 100% of its lithium requirements. This new facility is set to produce 10,000 tonnes of lithium annually, once on a planned mass production scale by 2027. If you consider an average EV battery requiring around 8kg of lithium, this roughly works out at enough equivalent supply, per year, to provide for around 1.25 million EV battery packs.
Cornish Lithium hopes to send the first samples of lithium created from this demonstration to car manufacturers by November, helping to show their viability within the EV battery industry.
As well as being locally produced, creating a more circular supply chain for the UK and reducing independence on imports, Cornish Lithium is also pushing the sustainability aspect of its production process, compared to conventional methods – by mining lithium-enriched granite from a repurposed china clay pit, which is then processed in a low-carbon method. The UK isn’t the only country hoping to further secure future battery supply as the green transition progresses. In the U.S., General Motors just contributed $625 million in a joint venture with Lithium Americas, to extract lithium in the state of Nevada.
Cornish Lithium Chief Executive, Jeremy Wrathall, commented:
“Lithium is critically important to the manufacturing of electric vehicles, grid scale electricity storage and rechargeable industrial and consumer electronics. We’re home to the largest lithium resource in Europe with enough beneath our feet in Cornwall to supply over half of what the electric vehicle industry needs. This is a huge untapped advantage that is currently being wasted, when it could be making our industries more competitive and resilient to global supply chain volatility.”