We’re down at South Crofty tin mine.
It was mined continuously for 406 years.
It was the last working tin mine in Cornwall
and now it's going to restart.
We're going to go further down in the mine.
But Steve, the mine manager, rather concerningly,
he's just left us here to go find the chief executive.
South Crofty is part of a new wave of mining activity across
England’s southwestern tip.
Tin, copper, tungsten
and lithium along with associated geothermal energy,
are now high in demand
because they’re key to the shift to clean energy.
For Cornwall, that offers the prospect of jobs
and a chance at a secure future.
For the UK,
it's a test of the government's ability to come up with the money and vision
to help revive the industry and quickly before the country gets left behind.
We are here in Cornwall, in the southernmost tip of England.
We're actually closer to Ireland or to France here than we are to London.
This is where the BBC filmed Poldark, galloping across the clifftops
and nothing says more than Cornwall
than these buildings in front of us here.
This is a former tin mine.
It closed in 1914, but thanks to forces across
the Atlantic, due to President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act,
there are billions of subsidies going into clean energy
and the energy transition, and that's being felt all around the world.
And as a direct result of that, there's a renewed hope
that the industry here, could be reinvigorated.
You just need to look at the ground
and pick up some stones, and you see the rich mineral deposits.
Cornwall was synonymous with the exploration and extraction
of mineral wealth, going back to at least Roman times.
Mining, predominantly of copper and tin, peaked in the 1800s
when Cornwall boasted some of the richest mines in the world,
and their closure last century contributed
to the region's relative economic decline.
So the renewed global demand for Cornwall's resources holds out
the promise of recovery.
Tin’s comeback is thanks in part to a European Union regulation
that banned lead in solder,
meaning tin became ubiquitous in electronic circuits.
But what's really supercharged the industry are US-China tensions
and Joe Biden's landmark climate legislation,
equipped with some $369 billion of funding for clean energy projects.
That and China's dominance is forcing governments
the world over to secure the raw materials needed to compete.
That's a golden opportunity for Cornwall, with its long history of mining.
And given the existing mine workings, it's an opportunity
that comes with less environmental impact than elsewhere.
Our first stop is South Crofty, where Cornish Metals
needs to pump out the water before it can restart mining.
This is living history, South Crofty opened in 1592
and it was the last Cornish tin mine to close in 1998.
When the mine closed, the tin price was around
$4,000 to $5,000 a ton.
Today it's about $25,000 a ton.
Yet the Tin Association is
predicting that tin prices
will rise to $30,000 or higher over the next 5 to 7 years
based on growing demand related to electrification.
The world is dependent on a handful of nations for tin, notably China.
With no production at all currently in Europe or North America.
So that really adds to the appeal of the high grade tin in Cornwall.
Another factor are the strict environmental standards in the UK
that mean mining must be as sustainable as possible.
He's left us here at this demonstration project.
You can see the vein that runs right along here,
east to west where they mined tin.
Just to show that it was viable.
Hopefully it’s the mine manager coming back.
We are lowering the pipe column with a submersible pump
on the bottom into the shaft,
down to about 360 meters below surface.
And that will allow us to de-water the mine, start pumping water out of the mine,
treat it before discharging it into the Red River.
And then we plan to be in production producing tin by the end of 2026.
And South Crofty could be the first primary tin producer in Europe.
There’s 8 million cubic meters of water in the mine at the moment.
It would take around 18 months to pump out the water.
The UK published a Critical Minerals Strategy stating
the need to develop projects.
But the criticism heard across Cornwall is that a strategy
in itself is not enough to get a viable industry back up and running.
Companies are looking for more government help,
especially at a time when other countries seem to be racing ahead.
Germany annouced a state fund of as much as $1.1 billion
to support critical mineral mining.
While the EU launched a Critical Raw Materials Act in March.
One of the companies calling for more action is Cornish Tin,
which, in addition to tin, has now found reserves of lithium,
a metal that's essential to batteries for electric vehicles.
What you're seeing here, these are all drill cores from our drilling program.
Can I touch one?
Yes. They are quite resilient.
This is granite, basically.
We discovered here that this granite,
we knew it had a relatively high, relative to other granites, lithium content.
And so how do you see the outlook for the industry,
not just for Cornish Tin, but more broadly for Cornwall?
I think what's needed now is a coherent plan
by the UK Government to actually
provide the infrastructure that's necessary to enable this to happen.
It's a race that we're in danger of losing unless we act now.
You know, I think in line with the UK's Critical Mineral Strategy
that was recently published,
the words are there but we now need to see action.
It's really only within the past year to 18 months
that these companies are seeing a more favorable investment climate.
But while the geopolitical winds may be in their favor,
these remain difficult journeys and nothing is set until the mine is open.
Cornish Lithium is a case in point.
Arguably the poster child of South-West England's mining potential,
the company reckons it’s sitting on the largest lithium deposit in Europe,
but it's been under constant funding strain,
only now receiving a significant investment of $67 million
that allows it to press ahead with its plans.
It takes about two kilometers
of drilling deep into the earth to get to the sweet spot
where lithium is found in the water that permeates the granite.
The idea is to use innovative methods
to extract the lithium from the brine above ground.
So without any traditional mining at all or the environmental consequences
that come with it.
The convenient by-product of all this is hot water.
Obviously we're looking for lithium in geothermal waters
and what we're interested in is the fact that it is holing.
So if you look at an example like this,
it's got lots of little holes in it.
And that's what allows the fluid flow through.
At depth that water is going to be hot.
At two kilometers you're talking 70 - 80 degrees centigrade.
So you’ve got heat that can be applied to industry,
housing developments, that sort of thing.
In addition to that, we are trying to separate
the lithium out of the water, so we will protenially create quite a lot of water.
And the benefits of water heated at depth are not limited to this company.
Just down the road, the UK's first geothermal energy pilot
project is due to start generating electricity in 2024.
It received £50 million of investment in March of 2023
and the government followed with £22 million more for a geothermal district
heating network to be supplied by this plant.
And they too plan to extract lithium from the
mineral rich water pumped from below.
And here just over my shoulder,
these are the old workings, what they call tailings, it’s waste effectively,
from previous mine workings.
They call these the Cornish Alps and you can see over the whole landscape
it’s just a landscape of industrial mining from the past.
But here, Cornish Lithium aims to mine their own lithium
in far more sustainable, environmentally friendly ways.
The geological promise here is evident,
as is, according to the companies, the promise of sustainability.
But the projects are yet to take off and make money.
What's more, the announcement that Jaguar Land Rover parent Tata Group
is building an EV battery plant up the road in Somerset
could create huge demand for locally sourced critical minerals
such as those found here.
The development of a responsible supply chain
of critical minerals is a unique chance for Cornwall,
but it’s also a make or break time for the nation.
Can industry and the government capitalize on this moment?
Is it fair, do you think, to say that there's
something of a renaissance in the industry underway?
We've got regulations coming in, rules of origin,
and that's making a push not only for the product
but from the product produced locally here in the UK.
So the combination of those fresh eyes that are looking at the geology
and those macroeconomic forces is a heavy mix
and I think it has indeed resulted in a renaissance
in mining and long may it continue for Cornwall.