Britain, long content to import the building blocks of modern industry, has decided it would quite like to dig some of them up itself. The government’s newly minted Critical Minerals Strategy sets out an ambition to meet 10% of domestic demand through home-grown production and a further 20% through recycling by 2035.
The goal is modest compared with the mineral giants of the world, but significant for a country where mining has been more heritage than future for decades. With demand for copper set to double and lithium needs projected to rise more than tenfold by 2035, policymakers have concluded that relying on global markets dominated by a handful of players — China foremost among them — is increasingly untenable.
Why critical minerals matter for the UK
Critical minerals underpin everything from smartphones and fridges to electric vehicles and renewable energy systems. They also form the guts of military hardware, aerospace kit and advanced electronics. Yet China controls around 70% of global rare earth mining and 90% of refining, giving it extraordinary leverage over high-tech supply chains.
The new strategy promises that by 2035 no more than 60% of Britain’s supply of any single critical mineral will come from one country. Achieving this requires more than stirring rhetoric: it demands investment, permitting reform and industrial coordination of a kind not seen since the heyday of British heavy industry.
The headline-grabber is lithium. The government wants at least 50,000 tonnes a year produced domestically by 2035, a quantity that exceeds the weight of the Titanic and would cover a sizeable proportion of Britain’s battery needs. Cornwall, home to Europe’s largest identified lithium deposit, is expected to play a starring role. The county’s subterranean revival will be complemented by other regions: Devon, with one of the world’s largest tungsten deposits; Swansea, home to a major nickel refinery; and Northern Ireland, where firms specialise in rare-earth recycling and separation technologies.
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What will the UK government be doing about this?
A modest but symbolically meaningful £50m fund will support early-stage projects, complementing the growing involvement of the National Wealth Fund and UK Export Finance. The sums are small by global standards (America and the European Union are deploying packages in the billions) but Britain hopes that targeted capital, streamlined permitting and industrial-tariff reform will accelerate projects that otherwise risk languishing.
Even so, the strategy is less about grandiose self-sufficiency than hedging against a multipolar world. Supply shocks caused by geopolitics, natural disasters or trade restrictions can easily ripple through industries dependent on mineral inputs.
Recent turmoil in global semiconductor markets, coupled with the weaponisation of minerals in diplomatic tussles, has sharpened Whitehall’s appetite for resilience. Stockpiling, almost forgotten since the Cold War, returns to the agenda, including in defence procurement. Britain’s participation in a NATO critical mineral stockpiling initiative hints at a wider rethinking of resource security.
An opportunity for British miners
Industry, unsurprisingly, is enthusiastic. Britain’s miners see an opportunity to revive dormant regions and reposition themselves at the heart of supply chains for EVs, aerospace and renewable infrastructure. Projects such as Cornish Metals’ TSXV:CUSN South Crofty in Cornwall, Tungsten West’s LON:TUN Hemerdon in Devon and Belfast’s magnet-recycling cluster argue that the national strategy aligns neatly with their plans to restart or expand production.
The narrative is one of industrial renaissance: hundreds of direct jobs, thousands more in local supply chains, and the slow re-creation of capabilities lost to decades of offshoring. Firms developing rare-earth separation and magnet-recycling technologies sense that they may soon become more strategically valuable than the ores themselves.
The strategy also nods to the circular economy. Recovering metals from end-of-life products is cleaner, cheaper and politically easier than digging new holes in the ground. Britain aims for recycled material to cover a fifth of its critical mineral demand by 2035, relying on technology clusters in Northern Ireland, the Midlands and the North East. Pairing recycling with domestic extraction, the government argues, will create a more robust ecosystem for the energy transition.
Are there any obstacles to consider?
Ambition will collide with several familiar British constraints. Permitting remains notoriously slow, local opposition strong and investor appetite patchy. Mining is rarely popular, even in areas that once depended on it, and reconciling net-zero aspirations with new extraction often provokes awkward contradictions.
Producing 50,000 tonnes of lithium a year sounds impressive, but Britain’s overall consumption by the 2030s will dwarf that figure. The country will still remain deeply entangled in international markets, where prices, politics and processing capacity remain dominated by countries far larger and more experienced.
Still, the shift is notable. For the first time in decades, Britain is treating minerals not as a footnote of industrial nostalgia but as a strategic sector in its own right. The government sees the sector not only as a buffer against global shocks but as a building block of its wider industrial strategy, supporting advanced manufacturing, clean energy and defence.
If successfully implemented, the strategy may help Britain edge ahead in the global race to secure the resources that will power the next century of economic life. Whether it can turn an agenda of resilience into one of renewal now depends on political stamina and the ability to turn a sheaf of ambitions into operational mines, refineries and recycling plants. For a country rediscovering its subterranean past, much will hinge on what lies beneath.
Comments (1)
Makes a lot of sense from a security perspective. Feels like this should have been implemented years ago. Better late than never.