Cornish Lithium secures £7.2m to drill deeper near Chacewater

Deep beneath the fields near Chacewater, hot water has been circulating through Cornish granite for far longer than anyone can measure, carrying with it traces of one of the most sought-after metals on the planet. Cornish Lithium now has £7.2m of UK Government money to work out how much of it can be brought to the surface and turned into a business.

The grant comes through the UK Government’s DRIVE35 programme and will part-fund a £14.5m package of drilling and testing at the company’s Cross Lanes Geothermal Lithium Project. Cornish Lithium is matching the grant pound for pound. The work is designed to test whether commercial production at the site stacks up technically and financially, and to fund further appraisal drilling at the neighbouring Baldhu site, near Truro.

What the £7.2m pays for

The plan is to drill two production wells, each reaching 2,000 metres down, and to run a Direct Lithium Extraction demonstration plant at Cross Lanes. A separate appraisal well will be sunk at Baldhu to confirm whether more lithium sits in the rock there. DRIVE35 is delivered by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade alongside the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK and Innovate UK. It forms part of the government’s Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan, which sets aside £4bn of grant funding to 2035 for automotive research, scale-up and transformation. All of the funding remains subject to His Majesty’s Government’s approval.

Cornwall’s water, the battery age’s metal

Lithium is a key component of the lithium-ion batteries that power phones, laptops, electric vehicles and large-scale energy storage, and it sits behind a wide range of advanced manufacturing. The government’s recently published Critical Minerals Strategy names it as essential to the energy transition and sets a target of 50,000 tonnes of domestically produced lithium a year by 2035. Cornish Lithium says its projects line up with that strategy, the wider Industrial Strategy and the government’s growth sector plans.

The Cross Lanes story goes back to 2023, when exploration drilling and testing confirmed that lithium-enriched geothermal waters were moving naturally through the rock beneath the site near Chacewater. In 2025 the company secured planning consent for the site’s development, including further phases of testing and evaluation.

📷Digital renderings of the Cross Lanes Geothermal Lithium Project - Credit: Cornish Lithium

What happens next at Cross Lanes

Jamie Airnes, chief executive of Cornish Lithium, framed the grant as a vote of confidence in the county. “This grant is further recognition that Cornwall is at the heart of the UK’s clean energy ambitions,” he said.

“Our projects have the potential to meet nearly 40% of the Government’s domestic lithium production target, delivering a scalable, low-carbon and secure supply of lithium for the UK, right here in Cornwall. That means £3.8bn contributed to the Cornish economy over the next 25 years and more than 700 well-paid, long-term jobs for the next generation, offering career opportunities that can keep home-grown talent in Cornwall.”

Jamie set out how the testing will run. “This DRIVE35 funding will allow Cornish Lithium to carry out extended testing over a defined timescale to validate sustainable production conditions and assess water reinjection rates. Once testing is complete, a modular demonstration plant will be installed to evaluate the preferred DLE technology at scale and explore the potential to harness geothermal heat for local homes and businesses.”

“Data gathered from the wells will inform the project’s Final Investment Decision and support the company’s wider ambition to develop a network of modular geothermal lithium production facilities across Cornwall.”

Industry and Westminster line up behind it

Ian Constance, chief executive of the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK, placed the Cornish work within a national push. “The projects announced demonstrate the depth of innovation and engineering excellence that exists across the UK automotive sector. Through DRIVE35, we are supporting businesses to move promising technologies to commercial deployment and manufacturing at scale,” he said.

“This investment is about far more than individual projects. It is about strengthening the UK’s capability to design, develop and build the technologies that will define the vehicles of the future. By bringing together industry, government and academia, DRIVE35 is helping to create the conditions for long-term growth, increasing investor confidence and reinforcing the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading destinations for automotive innovation.”

Jayne Kirkham, MP for Truro and Falmouth, welcomed the news for the wider region. “This is very exciting news for Cornwall because critical minerals are essential to the UK’s economy, national security and clean energy transition,” she said. “Our rich granite bedrock places our region at the heart of a cleaner, more resilient future and in creating hundreds of jobs, supporting local communities and strengthening our economy, this project presents a significant opportunity for Cornwall and the UK.”

The full planning application and its supporting documents can be viewed on the Cornwall Council planning register under reference PA24/06661. Whether the numbers behind two 2,000-metre wells and a demonstration plant add up is exactly what the next round of drilling is meant to find out.

📷Digital renderings of the Cross Lanes Geothermal Lithium Project - Credit: Cornish Lithium