The great British mining revival is needed now more than ever

Rising metal prices in 2020 and early-2021 have led to the resumption of exploration and development activities all over the globe, including many projects located closer to home than you might expect. Within the UK right now there is an incredible, sixteen companies, actively seeking to explore for metals and/or develop mines.

These projects are in a range of metals that can broadly be separated into four main groups: speciality and base metals projects focused in the Southwest of England (Figure 1) and North Wales (Figure 2); battery metals projects, which are also focused on Cornwall; precious metals projects focused in Northern Ireland and Scotland (Figure 2) and agri-minerals, located in North Yorkshire.

Figure 1: Speciality and Base Metals Projects (shown in blue) and Battery Metals Projects (shown in green) in the Southwest

Source Mining and Metals Research Corporation

Figure 2: Precious Metal Projects (shown in yellow) and Agri-Mineral Projects (shown in red) in the North

Source Mining and Metals Research Corporation

These projects are being developed at a critical time for the UK’s economy, which is suffering from rising unemployment and spiralling national debt. While mining has an unquestionable impact on the immediate environment around an orebody during the period that the mine is operational, it is a temporary use of land. Rehabilitation management and conservation measures that can be taken before production even commences can actually have a net positive effect on the local environment around a mine.

Mines also create skilled and high-paying direct jobs and secondary indirect and supply chain jobs, as well as providing the raw materials that are essential to every sector of our economy, while also generating taxes and royalties for local, regional and national governments.

A well-regulated mining industry can provide a country with huge economic benefits from a relatively small and temporary environmental footprint, so let us take a closer look at some of these projects.

Speciality Metals

(TWL)

(TWL) is a UK private company that is planning to resume operations at the Hemerdon Tungsten-Tin Mine, located in South Devon. The Hemerdon Mine, also known as Drakelands was formerly operated by Wolf Minerals who went into receivership in 2018 after having invested over £200 million into the project.

Tungsten West acquired the project in December 2019 for £10 million, and since acquiring the operation, the company has focused on gaining a greater understanding of the mineralogy and metallurgy of the deposit to avoid the processing plant issues faced by the former operator. Following its initial assessment, the company believes that the ore sorting and the front end of the plant need redesigning and initial estimates suggest that this might cost around £40 million.

While the company needs to complete additional metallurgical and processing studies before the operation can resume, once it does Tungsten West is confident it will be at the lower end of the cost curve and be able to generate significant levels of cash flow for the company, which mean taxes for the government, as well as high levels of employment for the local area.

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() recently completed a dual listing on the AIM market, in addition to its TSX-V listing, raising £8.2 million. The company plans to use the funds raised to undertake a drilling programme at its United Downs Copper-Tin Project, located in Cornwall, to determine the resource potential of a 1,000-metre-long target.

United Downs is located immediately adjacent to four former copper and tin producing mines: Consolidated Mines and United Mines to the west; and Mount Wellington and Wheal Jane Mines to the east. Initial drilling of the area in April 2020 resulted in the discovery of new zones of high-grade copper-tin mineralisation in a previously unmined area between the historic United Mine and Consolidated Mines.

In addition to the United Downs…