Is the UK doing enough to support mining development?
With the release of the UK’s strategy for securing the supply of critical minerals in July this year, there’s been plenty of discussion about the government’s plans, what it wants to achieve, and how it compares with other nations.
Having been in and around the mining sphere since 2006, I’ve witnessed multiple mining boom and bust cycles, crammed into that short space of time, with varying support for the mining industry in between. I’ve also witnessed a mining industry on it’s knees in Cornwall grow and blossom into a thriving renewed industry emplying hundreds across the county through a mix of private investment, crowdfunding and government grants. Since when did exploration companies need to crowdfund?! The UK government could do more to support this growing industry, and it could take a leaf out of other developed nations books. These are some of the attitudes and strategies towards growing domestic metal production, or cementing a position as a global leader in metal production that I have seen in my time in the industry. This list is by no means exhaustive, so please chime in with your own experience of programs that you’d like the UK government to replicate.
In Canada, the government at least has provided matched funding for mineral exploration and research projects for industry and academic study, and has released mass geochemical datasets for use by mining companies. I was at Mineral Exploration Roundup (Vancouver) in 2011 or 2012 when the chem data was released. The conference had a live ‘stake’ map, showing what areas had been staked, and it was incredible to see new claims popping up in real time in the moments and hours after the chem data was released. Hundreds of new prospective areas were identified and targeted in a short space of time. More recently, the Canadian government has committed to investing C$2 billion (£1.35 billion) on a strategy to accelerate the production and processing of minerals critical to the EV battery supply chain.
From my work in emerging mining technology, the Canadian government has also been offering large ($Millions) prizes for development of novel, energy saving mineral processing methods in the Crush It! Challenge.
In addition to teaching about mineral exploration at University geoscience courses, both Australia and Canada have their own specialist research groups into ore deposits, being CODES (The Centre for Ore Deposits and Earth Sciences) and MDRU (The Mineral Deposit Research Unit) respectively. Both nationas are much larger than the UK, and are endowed with much more mineral wealth, however there is no reason that the UK cannot have a specialist ore deposit study institution, and develop expertise that can be deployed worldwide.
Discussing with colleagues from NTNU and the Arctic University, Norway has ambitions to replicate it’s dominance in the oil sector in the mining sector and develop new technologies in mining and licence them to be produced in country - I’ve been involved in Norwegian technology development projects like this since 2015 and no doubt they extend much earlier than that. Furthermore, Norway’s tender system for public works also incorporates a signigicant CO2 aspect - not necessariliy the cheapest proposal wins tenders, but the most environmentally friendly. Norway at least is far ahead of the UK in the ‘Enhance’ part of the ACE Plan.
The EU at large has had a critical mineral strategy stretching back over a decade - research programs like Horizon 2020 its successor Horizon Europe have, and continue to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into research programs for the future, including green and economical mining and mineral processing projects. The MIREU project received just short of €3m between 2017 and 2021 to “establish a network of mining and metallurgy regions across Europe with a view to ensure the sustained and sustainable supply of mineral raw materials to the EU”. The FAME project received €7.5m between 2015 and 2020 in order to increase our technical ability to exploit unconventional (small, complex or low grade) ore deposits within the EU to reduce outside dependancy - my role in this was the use of Selfrag high voltage fragmentation as a means to liberate metals from complex ores, resulting in Minerals Engineering articles on Scheelite and Cassiterite. Another project I watched the development of was the Imp@ct project (2016 - 2020) headed by Kate Moore at The Camborne School of Mines, which received €7m to develop portable, containerised (mobile) mineral processing solutions for small scale mining, reducing the CapEx of building a plant on site.
This is what the UK is trying to compete with - already developed and scaled governmental support for the mining industry and industrial research, into which other governments are pouring billions. From what we have seen so far, the UK government’s commitment to UK mining is on the scale of millions, electric vehicle development is is the tens to hundreds of millions range. A good start, but an order of magnitude below the investment of those it wishes to compete with.
The next few years will be interesting indeed - the UK is investing less than other countries, however this is significantly more than the essentially zero it was investing before (PhD student funding?), I’d expect plenty of opportunities within the critical metals sphere to open up, however we’re going to have to work with our European colleagues, and not against them, otherwise I fear we will be left in the dust.
These are just a few of the examples of countries I’ve been involved or had projects in where I’m aware of the local mining climate - there are undoubtedly more examples out there of new pro-mining initiatives, so if you have any, please let me know in the comments below.