UK Minerals Strategy Exposes Key Vulnerabilities
The UK has a new plan. The government’s ‘Critical Minerals Refresh’, released this March, updates its 2022 strategy with promises to secure the lithium, cobalt, and rare earths essential for everything from EV batteries to advanced weapons systems. But the document, intended to project strength, does more to highlight the nation’s deep-seated dependencies and the chasm between its ambitions and its available capital.
Whitehall is talking up its progress. Officials from the Department for Business and Trade point to the launch of the Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC) and the allocation of £65.5 million through government schemes like the Automotive Transformation Fund. The strategy itself rests on a ‘twin-track’ approach: build a domestic mining and refining ecosystem while simultaneously diversifying international supply chains away from high-risk countries.
It’s a sound theory. The execution, however, is already faltering.
The collapse of Britishvolt, the gigafactory project once hailed as a cornerstone of the UK’s battery ambitions, casts a long and embarrassing shadow over any claims of domestic progress.
Britishvolt went into administration in early 2023. The failure, a mix of funding shortfalls and management issues, serves as a stark reminder that press releases don’t build industrial capacity. While the strategy mentions potential lithium and tungsten projects in Cornwall, the market is skeptical. Attracting the immense private investment needed for such projects is difficult when the government’s flagship venture has already failed so publicly.
The funding figures simply don’t scale. The £65.5 million in government support is dwarfed by the massive state-led industrial policies of its allies and competitors. Jeff Townsend, founder of the Critical Minerals Association (CMA), notes that the UK is “in a global race,” but its financial commitment is trivial compared to the hundreds of billions being deployed through the US Inflation Reduction Act or the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act.
The numbers look even worse at the project level. “The UK’s £65.5 million is a start, but it doesn’t build a mine,” Townsend stated bluntly, adding it “barely funds a feasibility study.” Without a serious injection of public and private capital, the UK isn’t just showing up late to the race; it’s arriving on a bicycle.
So, the strategy’s second track—international diversification—becomes absolutely critical. The UK has inked partnerships with mineral-rich nations like Australia, Canada, and South Africa, and joined the US-led Minerals Security Partnership (MSP). These are necessary diplomatic moves. But they are long-term plays in a world facing short-term shocks.
The immediate problem is China. The dependency isn’t just a talking point; it’s a mathematical reality. Initial reports from the UK’s own CMIC lay out the stark figures. China currently refines 68% of the world’s nickel, 73% of its cobalt, 95% of its manganese, and a near-total monopoly on separated rare earth elements. These are the processed materials that feed directly into factories, not just the raw ore pulled from the ground.
The government’s refresh document acknowledges this vulnerability. It offers, however, few concrete, near-term actions to decouple these supply chains beyond vague commitments to “mitigate risks” and “work with allies.” The timeline for achieving any meaningful level of independence remains undefined, which is a critical omission for industries that need to make investment decisions now.
There is some hope in a circular economy. The Faraday Institution estimates that by 2040, recycling could meet a significant slice of the UK’s demand for cobalt, lithium, and nickel. This would reduce import dependency and create a more resilient domestic ecosystem. But building a recycling infrastructure capable of handling complex products like EV batteries requires, once again, substantial upfront investment that the strategy doesn’t explicitly fund.
The UK now has a clearer picture of its mineral problem. What it lacks is a credible, well-funded plan to actually solve it. The strategy refresh identifies the right challenges but seems to shrink from the scale of the required solutions, leaving the UK’s tech, green energy, and defence sectors dangerously exposed.
