A mining company drilling for sought-after lithium in Cornwall has closed a crowdfunding round after raising £5.2million from investors in just three days.
Cornish Lithium Ltd, which is exploring for lithium and other battery metals in the South West, was delighted with the results of its crowdfunding round on Crowdcube, which far surpassed its original target of £1.5million.
The firm - which is headquartered at the Tremough Innovation Centre in Penryn, and comprises a team of skilled geologists, many of whom are graduates of Camborne School of Mines –is now accelerating its plans to start lithium production in the county and its search for other valuable battery metals.
Jeremy Wrathall, founder and chief executive of Cornish Lithium, said: “We set out to raise £1.5million. To be so massively oversubscribed in only three days is an amazing vote of confidence in Cornish Lithium, the team, and our plans for the creation, in Cornwall, of a vital new industry for the UK economy.
“Having raised more money than we expected means that we are now able to accelerate our plans to build an environmentally-responsible lithium extraction industry in Cornwall while continuing to create value for our shareholders.
“With this additional funding, we can accelerate our drive towards the production of lithium from our geothermal waters project and from our hard rock project near St Austell as well as to advance our exploration programme focused on other battery metals. On behalf of the board, I would like to thank our shareholders for their support and to welcome our new shareholders.”
Cornish Lithium is exploring for the lithium and other metals, used widely in batteries, in geothermal waters and hard rock, It uses modern technology to evaluate the potential to responsibly extract these vital battery metals in Cornwall, including lithium from the geothermal waters that circulate deep beneath historic mine workings.
According to the Volkswagen Group, lithium is the “irreplaceable element of the electric era,” which makes lithium vitally important for the future economy as the world moves towards renewable energy sources and away from a reliance on fossil fuels. The hunt for the metal has been described as the 21 st Century’s “gold rush”.
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As the UK aspires to be a leader in the move towards electric vehicles and renewable power in order to realise its net zero carbon ambitions by 2050, it will need significant quantities of lithium in order to build batteries for the domestic car industry.
Cornish Lithium, one of several companies exploring in the county, aims to establish a sustainable and environmentally-responsible extraction industry for minerals that facilitate this transition to a green economy via renewable energy and battery power storage.
Cornish Lithium has already received a “substantial award” from the UK Government’s Getting Building Fund for a £4million lithium extraction pilot plant at United Downs in conjunction with Geothermal Engineering Ltd.
As a result of its previous crowdfund in 2019, the company has drilled and evaluated its own shallow wells of approximately 1km deep into lithium-rich geothermal waters near United Downs, as well as 41 holes of approximately 40m deep in a prospective hard rock granite source of lithium in a former china clay pit near St Austell, the metallurgical results of which are “highly encouraging”.
This progress towards the creation of a new lithium industry in Cornwall has been supported by Cornish Lithium’s first crowdfund in July 2019 and a pre-emptive rights offering to shareholders in April 2020, which raised a total of £2.2million.
