Cornish Lithium plc will receive £53.6 million of private and public funding, with up to a further £168m, for its lithium in hard rock and geothermal waters projects in Cornwall.
TRELAVOUR
The money will come from the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB), The Energy & Minerals Group (EMG) and the company’s current largest investor TechMet.
Founded with £12 billion public money in 2021 by the then chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, the UKIB will give Cornish Lithium £24m in its “first direct equity investment into the development of the UK’s critical minerals supply chain”, said the company in a statement.
American private investment management firm EMG based in Houston, targets investments of $150m to $1,000m in the energy and minerals sectors.
EMG’s website states that as at 31 March 2023, it had approximately $14 billion assets under management. It will equal UKIB’s package of £24m.
TechMet, backed by the US Government’s Development Finance Corporation, is investing a further US$7m (£5.6m), taking its total investment into Cornish Lithium to $30m.
Cornish Lithium also plans to hold a further fundraise through crowdfunding for up to £6.9m, with priority given to existing shareholders.
Once in commercial production, Cornish Lithium aims to increase its workforce from 70 people to more than 300 and help develop the UK’s domestic supply of electric vehicle batteries.
Founder and chief executive officer Jeremy Wrathall said: “This funding will enable us to progress our Trelavour hard rock lithium project to a construction-ready status as well as completing the engineering design work required to build a demonstration-scale geothermal waters extraction facility.”
He added that the investment would also drive forward the “modern-day renaissance of Cornwall’s 4,000-year mining heritage”.
2 Replies to “Cornish Lithium receives £53.6m private-public funds”
Comments are closed.