Reviewing the UK Critical Minerals Strategy
Back in July (2022) the UK government unveiled it’s first ‘Critical Minerals Strategy’ dubbed ‘Resilience for the Future. The government, after significant lobbying from industrial action groups such as the Critical Minerals Association (CMA), has given a response to the alarm bells that the BGS and the EU has been ringing since 2010 about security of supply of metals critical to modern life.
While a fantastic step forwards, in the midst of a UK mining renewal, is this enough, or too little, too late?
The CMA hosted a breakfast panel discussion on the strategy on the 26th September, “Reviewing the UK Minerals Strategy” where Guy Winter, Lucy Crane and Dennis Rowland (an old friend from The University of Leeds) came together with the CMA’s Jeff Townsend to give their opinions on the plan.
“Great first steps, but the devil is in the detail”
- Lucy Crane
Overall, the sentiment from the panel was that the document is a good start, and provides a sketch outline of what the government wants to achieve (i.e. remove some reliance on other nations for certain minerals; secure supply from other friendlier nations; turn London into a hub for honest mining investment), however falls short in saying how they will do it. The document acknowledges that we need many more critical metals and in stable supply, however does nothing to address how these will be delivered globally, much in the same way the EU has vastly underesitmated mining company’s abilities to produce enough metals for the green industrial revolution.
Underpinning the UK Plan is another three word slogan - Accelerate; Collaborate; Enhance (ACE), which loosely aims to accelerate the finding and mining of new ore deposits; Collaborate with other nations to secure supply of critical metals, and to Enhance international markets in regard to transparency, accountability and ESG standards.
Key industry pain points that were identified in each area were identified by the panel are as follows:
Accelerate: It can take 15 years from finding an ore deposit to having an operational mine, with much of this being entangled in permitting - can we reduce that to 10 years? Will the government follow Canada and Australia and make large scale hyperspectral and geochemical data freely available to mining companies, which will greatly speed up the finding of deposits. Can the government support in the financing of projects which de-risks them.
“We need clear funding means and accessible data to de-risk projects and accelerate permitting and financing”
- Dennis Rowland
Colaborate: How does the UK actually fit into a global critical minerals supply chain, is it feasable to replicate efforts that are ongoing in Europe to also secure local production and refining of metals, and both against an entrenched competitor (China) that has been allowed to dominate markets for the last 2 decades?
“Some people don’t like Europeans - Get over it!…we’re going to have to get over [brexit] and work with the EU”
- Guy Winter
Enhance was covered a little less than the others, being a bit more vague, however with a proposed increase in environmental, societal and governance (ESG) awareness and the relatively more constly methods to produce minerals in such a way (e.g., renewable enegy only) there arises issues of more expensive, but lower CO2 ‘premium’ western produced metals which will then compete with eastern ‘dirty’ metals, and how do you get companies to choose one over the other.
Overall, I feel that the document an plan is a good start, when viewed in a vacuum, however it begs the question whether this strategy is too little, and 12 years too late for the UK to become the global leader it has the ambition to be. As far back as 2011, the Canadian government was releasing mass geochemical datsets to drive mining and investment, China has been allowed to dominate the rare-earth sphere unopposed for a long time, and the EU collectively has much more money and the will to spend it on securing supply, and associated academic/industrial research required to do so than the UK appears to.