Ministers back Cornwall-to-Teesside route as Britain moves to break its dependence on overseas battery materials.
Tees Valley Lithium has been named by the Government as one of two projects at the centre of Britain’s push to build its own lithium supply chain.
The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade said on Sunday it had acted to unlock nearly £230 million of private investment in lithium projects in Cornwall and Teesside, as ministers used the opening of Labour’s conference to champion the Prime Minister’s reindustrialisation mission.
The Government described TVL’s £185 million investment as establishing “one of Europe’s largest lithium refineries”, backed by an £18.3 million DRIVE35 Offer in Principle first announced earlier this month.
Alongside it, Geothermal Engineering Ltd will extract lithium from geothermal brine beneath Cornwall. But it will produce technical-grade lithium carbonate. It cannot be used in a battery until it has been refined into battery-grade chemicals, a step that currently happens almost entirely outside Europe.
That is the gap TVL was established to close. The company already has a memorandum of understanding with Geothermal Engineering, linking Cornish supply to Teesside refining and joining the two Government-backed projects in a single domestic chain.
Vikki Jeckell, Chief Executive of TVL, said: “Britain can mine lithium, but it cannot put that lithium into a battery without refining it. Government has now backed both halves of that equation. Cornwall supplies the resource, and Teesside turns it into battery-grade material. That is what a sovereign supply chain looks like.”
TVL is developing a £185 million first-phase refinery at Billingham capable of producing 25,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium hydroxide a year, with scope to grow up to 100,000 tonnes. The first phase is expected to support around 1,700 jobs across operations, the supply chain and construction.
The Government expects demand for lithium to rise by 1,100 per cent by 2035 as carmakers switch to electric vehicles.
