The announcement of a £4bn ‘gigafactory’ in Somerset has sparked warnings that Britain is facing a decisive moment in its efforts to secure the raw materials it needs 🔎 Big Read by cahalmilmo
The problem is that some in the minerals industry feel progress in Britain is glacial compared to its competitors. Germany announced last month that it has set aside €1bn to support mining of critical minerals, while America is providing subsidies of nearly $400bn via the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act to boost clean technologies.
Sally Norcross-Webb, founder and chief executive of Cornish Tin, one of three companies with plans to extract lithium or tin from the rock beds of the South West, said progress such as the Tata gigafactory was to be welcomed but ministers were not as yet seizing the opportunity to secure domestic supplies of these vital materials. She told: There is an even bigger opportunity here to build a robust supply chain, if the Government has the foresight to help make it happen.
The Department for Business and Trade said it was taking action to “ensure the resilience of critical mineral supply chains”, including the formation earlier this year of a new independent body to investigate vulnerabilities and opportunites for British industry in sourcing raw materials. Britain has also signed deals with South Africa, Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Saudi Arabia to secure mineral supplies.
In Humberside, a pioneering £145m plant capable of processing the raw materials needed for rare earth magnets, used in technology such as wind turbines and electric vehicles, had been due to start production by the end of this year. That date has now slipped to 2025, although its owners, Pensana, announced in April that they had secured a longterm deal to sell 25 per cent of production to Japan.
Danmark Seneste Nyt, Danmark Overskrifter
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