Crown Estate grants Cornish Tin rights to explore for region’s gold

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Cornish Tin, an early-stage mining group, has been granted rights by the Crown Estate to explore for gold and silver in the latest fillip for Cornwall’s ambitions to revive its mining heritage.

The monarchy’s multibillion-pound portfolio of land holdings has granted the British company options for six years for exclusive exploration rights for the precious metals across two areas of Cornwall covering 14 per cent of the county’s land mass.

Cornish Tin is searching primarily for lithium and tin, two materials deemed to be critical for the shift to renewable power and electric cars, but the discovery of precious metals along with those strategic elements would help boost project economics. The rights to minerals such as lithium are held by private landowners, not the Crown Estate.

Sally Norcross-Webb, chief executive of the six-year-old company, said it was a “significant win as it completes the full suite of minerals we have the right to extract”.

Cornwall used to be the global centre for china clay mining, an input for ceramics, but extraction and manufacturing activity in the region has dwindled, leaving one of the poorest parts of the UK largely reliant on tourism.

Rival project developer Cornish Lithium is powering ahead in the race to turn the south-west of the UK into a mining jurisdiction of importance for the energy transition, trailed by others including Cornish Metals, Imerys-British Lithium and Tungsten West. The nascent revival of the sector made its biggest step forward to date in August when Cornish Lithium secured a $67mn investment package backed by the UK Infrastructure Bank, a state lender.

Cornish Tin is a minnow with at least five years ahead before it produces anything, requiring multiple rounds of fundraising and exploration.

Founder Norcross-Webb is a former lawyer who has specialised in mineral rights in the UK and has been deploying her expertise to amass mineral rights across Cornwall.

The firm now has mineral rights for gold and silver covering 123,447 acres. Within that land mass, it has already signed rights for all other minerals from copper and lithium to tin and tungsten across 3,900 acres including its flagship Great Wheal Vor project in the old mining district of Breage.

Cornish Tin appointed Clive Newall — co-founder of First Quantum Minerals, a Canadian copper giant worth $15bn — as chair in 2021, adding a heavyweight of the mining world to its board that could ease the company’s ability to draw in financing. He has also invested in the group.

The company has raised £2.8mn and is seeking to raise about £3mn in a combined private placing and retail investor raise with a pre-money valuation of £27mn to fund a second drilling programme starting next year.

Norcross-Webb said the granting of the lease options by the Crown Estate highlighted how complex the UK minerals rights system is.

“It’s such a chaotic system in the UK on mineral rights. It’s so different from the rest of the world,” she said. “Mineral rights are in private hands and you can’t just go and apply for a licence.”

According to executives familiar with mining in Cornwall, some of the areas within Cornish Tin’s mineral rights package include holiday homes and natural beauty spots.

Norcross-Webb said the area was predominantly agricultural with mineral developments having support from farmers, and any development would protect the landscape as stipulated by local planning policy passed in 2018.

Cornish Lithium was granted rights to explore for lithium within geothermal brines off the coast of Cornwall by the Crown Estate in 2021.