Durham Site Poised To Be First British Lithium Mine

The use of lithium in car batteries is an essential part of the grand aim of weaning Britain off petrol and diesel and onto electric vehicles. But there are many challenges – among them the security of supply.

However, fears that Western nations like the UK would be at the mercy of Chinese geopolitical leverage through that country controlling the global lithium supply has eased, not least as it will soon no longer have the bulk of lithium processing plants within its borders.

Britain’s Forthcoming Processing Capacity

Concerns about this in the UK are being assuaged by the construction of Britain’s first two lithium processing plants, based in the Tees Freeport, with both Tees Valley Lithium and Green Lithium aiming to be up and running in the next couple of years.

Tees Valley Lithium expects its plant alone to meet 15 per cent of European demand by 2030, while Green Lithium expects its facility to meet six per cent of demand.

This is all good news, creating jobs and boosting European supply. But what, it may be asked, of the lithium these contract processing plants will refine? While much of it will be imported from friendly nations such as Australia, there is now a real prospect of a substantial amount of lithium being both mined and refined in the UK.

A Domestic Lithium First

Weardale Lithium is in pole position in the race to launch the first British lithium mine, with the company recently applying for permission to extract up to 10,000 tonnes of the material a year from a site in the Wear Valley.

While the area is scenically attractive – much of the Wear Valley lies in the North York Moors National Park – the plant would be small and unobtrusive. Moreover, it is a mineral-rich area with a long history of mining. While County Durham is most famous for coal, Weardale has previously been mined for lead and silver.

Commenting on this development, the chief executive of the firm Stewart Dickson described the site as “a facility for domestic lithium production from naturally occurring geothermal groundwaters that would become a focal point for the UK lithium industry.”

Weardale Lithium is not alone in promising a British source of the material, with Cornish Lithium hoping to extract a similar amount each year in due course. Some of this comes from hard rock, while much of it, as in Weardale, comes from geothermal brines that can provide a green energy source to power the extraction process.

A total of 20,000 tonnes of lithium produced domestically could make up a significant proportion of the material refined at the two Tees Freeport plants. Indeed, Weardale Lithium has a memorandum of understanding in place with Tees Valley Lithium to supply the material to it, making it a very local affair.

A Sense Of Perspective

To put this in perspective, the Green Lithium plant will process 350,000 tonnes of raw material a year, this being much the smaller of the two Teesside plants, so it remains the case for now that the great majority of the unrefined lithium making its way to the Freeport will be imported. 

However, that is not the full picture either. There are other UK lithium firms already in existence, such as British Lithium, which is also based in Cornwall. That may add to the output, while further exploration and future extraction may occur across the south-west and north-east of England, not to mention anywhere else significant new deposits are found.

Other possibilities may lie in the extraction of lithium from seawater which, if it can be done at scale, would give an island nation like the UK with its extensive territorial waters an obvious advantage over countries that are landlocked or have little coastline.

If the UK can be part of an offshore lithium industry, the prospect may emerge of Britain being effectively self-sufficient in the resource. Moreover, it would remove concerns about destructive or exploitative mining practices, the carbon footprint of transporting lithium thousands of miles to be processed or disruption to natural habitats.

In such circumstances, the two plants now being built to process lithium in the UK would be quite inadequate. More would surely be built, not necessarily just in the Tees Freeport.

Achieving as much domestic supply of lithium and other key ‘rare earth’ materials is part of the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy, published in 2022. While the idea that the sea could help the UK smash all its targets is a tantalising one, for now, the possibility of Britain’s first lithium mine being given the go-ahead marks a significant milestone.