Lithium mine developer Cornish Lithium, which has APAC and British native Lithium exports in its sight, has received further funding through the UK government's Innovate UK scheme, which will involve using the funds to build a hydrometallurgical section of a demonstration scale processing plant at the group's Trelith processing site, part of its Trelavour Hard Rock Lithium Project becoming a reality near St. Austell in southwest England.
It is a step towards the company’s proposed commercial production of lithium hydroxide from 2026.
Trelavour, one of several offtake projects being developed by the UK-based junior, could produce an average of 7,800 mt/year of lithium hydroxide over a 20-year mine life with a capex cost of $243.8 million, based on a recently completed scoping study currently in review by stakeholders.
The new funds, at an undisclosed value, have been obtained through the ATF’s Scale up Readiness Validation competition run by Innovate UK, Cornish Lithium said in a statement on Sept. 7.
It is the fourth such significant government funding for Cornish Lithium, and the second for Trelavour, the company said in an email.
The moves include new steps to stockpile domestically their reserve of critical minerals like lithium needed for electric vehicle batteries to accelerate decarbonisation of the UK transport sector and help meet net-zero targets. UK car makers face pressure to switch their production to EVs by 2030.
In April 2023, the firm said that Cornish Lithium had contracted and installed the UK's first direct lithium extraction (DLE) pilot plant at a separate project at its geothermal waters test facility at United Downs in Cornwall. The plant, which is a GBP4 million ($4.56 million) investment and was granted GBP2.9 million from the UK government's Getting Building Fund, was boosted with support from the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership.
Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) is an environmentally friendly process that selectively removes lithium from the geothermal waters through the use of a resin or filter.
Hard rock project
The Trelith demonstration plant, which will be linked to the project near St. Austell, will include concentration and hydrometallurgical processing steps, the company said.
The initial pre-concentration step will involve comminution and flotation to generate a lithium mica concentrate, according to Cornish Lithium. The resulting concentrate will then be introduced into the second processing step, a hydrometallurgical process based on the patented Lepidico L-Max and LOH-Max processing technologies for which Cornish Lithium has exclusive rights, to produce lithium hydroxide.
The hydrometallurgical components of the plant should enable production of commercial sample lithium hydroxide for use by end-users including battery manufacturers and automotive OEMs to evaluate. The demonstration perm plant will also enable precursor and byproduct production samples of gypsum and sulfate of potash, and caesium and rubidium sulfate alum.
Cornish Lithium has already conducted detailed metallurgical test work of these processes at pilot scale: the demonstration scale plant will now validate the commercial potential of the technology, also providing an important input to the company's feasibility study, the statement said.
The company plans to construct a commercial lithium extraction plant in Cornwall, with lithium hydroxide production projected to begin in 2026, following the results of said feasibility study.
According to the company, the UK currently depends entirely on imports of lithium.
It is one of only two companies that are currently working on lithium mine projects in the UK. The other, British Lithium, began lithium carbonate production at a pilot plant, also in Cornwall, earlier this year. British Lithium aims to supply 21,000 mt/year of battery-grade lithium carbonate by the end of three years -- expected to represent around one third of the UK's requirement by 2030 -- and has been awarded at least GBP3.4 million in UK government grants.
Supply chain
“The ATF grant will accelerate our journey to the commercial production of battery grade lithium hydroxide in the UK,” said Cornish Lithium CEO and founder Jeremy Wrathall in the statement. “We need a secure, sustainable domestic source of lithium to build a resilient electric vehicle supply chain for the British automotive sector. The award of this grant offers additional validation of the potential of the Trelavour project, coming on the heels of the decision by our largest institutional shareholder, TechMet, to exercise its option to invest a further GBP9 million following its review of our (now-completed) scoping study."
The ATF award to the company and funds from the TechMet option exercise will be executed together for the construction of the demonstration plant at Trelavour.
Wrathall added, "This will be an important workstream to allow us to fully define the processing flowsheet for the project and be able to produce samples that can be provided to potential end-users, either as lithium compounds or as byproducts which haven’t been accounted for in the project’s economic model thus far."
The company does not have any firm offtake partners at this time, it said by email.
assessed lithium carbonate Sept. 6 at $71,900/mt, unchanged day on day and down $100/mt on the week. Lithium hydroxide edged down $200/mt on the day and was unchanged on the week at $75,000/mt, amid thin spot market activity, data showed.
