British Lithium Ltd has been awarded a £2 million government grant to develop its project to extract lithium carbonate from mica in Cornish granite.
FUND
The Australian company received the money as part of the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC)’s automotive transformation fund, which supports large scale industrialisation.
The news follows yesterday’s announcement from local company Cornish Lithium Ltd that it had received funding, without specifying the amount.
British Lithium was one of the winners in the APC*’s scale up readiness validation (SuRV)* competition.
PRODUCTION
For more than five years, British Lithium has been researching and developing the extraction of lithium carbonate from mica in Cornish granite.
The company claims that its pilot plant, part-funded by Innovate UK, near St Austell is the world’s first to use new sustainable technology to produce successfully 99.9% pure battery-grade lithium carbonate.
British Lithium is also waiting three patents.
At the end of 2021, the pilot plant became operational and the company aims for large-scale lithium carbonate production in some three years.
British Lithium said it plans to produce 21,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate each year from a single quarrying and refining site by 2030, when all UK car manufacturing converts to electric.
DEVELOPMENT
“Lithium has never been produced commercially from mica before, so it’s been very important to rigorously test, refine and optimise our technology,” added chief executive Andrew Smith.
“The ATF grant is key in helping us move on to the next phase of our development and we’re delighted to have their support.”
APC
The APC has a £1 billion investment fund, supplied by the automotive industry via the Automotive Council and the Government through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and managed by Innovate UK.
The SuRV is awarding a total £25 million to companies to increase confidence in large-scale manufacturing investments to build electrified supply chains in the UK.