The UK's new Critical Minerals Strategy must make domestic extraction, refining, and recycling pillars of sovereign capability, experts have urged.
The plan should define critical minerals as key to a broader political-economic reset that can underpin jobs and local growth, a new report by the University of Exeter's Critical Minerals Challenge Centre, says.
Members of the UKRI-funded research hub – based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in the critical minerals hotbed of Cornwall, a world-leading reserve of tin, lithium and tungsten - argue the strategy should act as a testbed for the government's 'securonomics' agenda.
The briefing, drawing on insights from a recent roundtable of politicians, policymakers and academics held at the Houses of Parliament, calls for the Government's strategy to recognise critical minerals are a strategic opportunity to reindustrialise the UK, strengthen security, address net zero aims, and deliver tangible benefits to communities long left behind. The strategy should combine realism about Britain's position within international production networks with support for domestic reindustrialisation and strategic advantage.
Frances Wall, Professor of Applied Minerology at the Camborne School of Mines at the University of Exeter, said: "Mineral production from Cornwall and west Devon, where we have world-class geological resources, is an important piece of the jigsaw to ensure UK critical minerals supply. It fits alongside links to international production and much better resource stewardship of the materials we have already mined. There are certainly economic, social and environmental benefits for the region if done well. Our Critical Minerals Challenge Centre is working with the local companies, NGOs and government and researching how best to do this."
The briefing outlines how Cornwall acts as the perfect "proof of concept" for the government's "Securonomics" agenda. The University of Exeter's Penryn Campus is home to world-class R&D at Camborne School of Mines as well as policy expertise in humanities and social sciences. These interdisciplinary perspectives on the critical minerals opportunity, brought together in the Critical Minerals Challenge Centre, combine with the resource-rich local geology to offer the region as a blueprint for how the UK can power and protect itself in a changing world.
Professor Harry Pitts, a political economist from the University of Exeter and the author of the briefing, said: "We hope the strategy sees critical minerals as not only powering the country through their contribution to the green and digital transitions, but protecting the country through their contribution to defence rearmament and economic resilience, and promoting opportunity and prosperity in parts of Britain left behind by deindustrialisation.
"Cornwall stands to benefit specifically from potential government support offered under the strategy. The critical minerals in Cornwall's granite bedrock like tin, lithium and tungsten are strategically pivotal to the security and prosperity of the country in a more dangerous and unpredictable world.
"Being core to UK's future defence capability, digital infrastructure and green energy transition, Cornwall's combination of unique natural advantages will be unlocked by a future of skilled work, local growth and infrastructural investment that demonstrates 'securonomics' in action."
