US offers $225m funding to rehabilitate Cornwall mine

Britain’s only tin mine could end up shipping most of its future output to the United States after the US government signed up to a $225 million (£166 million) grant to refurbish the historic South Crofty site in Cornwall.

Cornish Metals, which is working to bring the South Crofty mine near Camborne back into production, has received a letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Exim), proposing a potential financing package linked to supplying tin to the US market.

The move comes less than a year after Cornish Metals received a £28.6 million investment from the UK’s government-backed National Wealth Fund, which was created at the time to support domestic supply of precious metals.

In its statement, Cornish Metals said Exim’s interest is clearly linked to South Crofty providing a “relevant supply of tin” to the United States, as Washington seeks to strengthen key mineral supply chains and reduce dependence on overseas producers.

The company estimates it will cost around £198 million to restart the mine by mid-2028, with both costs and times increasing over the past year. It is now seeking funding to cover capital and operating costs as it moves towards production. Shares in Cornish Metals rose 2.7 percent following the Exim interest rate confirmation.

Tin is considered a valuable mineral and is widely used in electronics, renewable energy systems and advanced manufacturing. The UK currently has no domestic tin production, and South Crofty is expected to produce an average of 4,700 tonnes of concentrated tin annually in its first five years, roughly equal to the UK’s annual consumption.

Fawzi Hanano, who is the development officer of the Cornish Metals company, said that the American financial proposal will come as expected in terms of starting.

“Exim will not give money to a foreign company unless there is something for them,” he said. “It would be ideal if they wanted all the production, but in reality it would be a certain percentage corresponding to the level of financing offered.”

He confirmed that none of South Crofty’s future output is currently committed to consumers and that there is no commitment for the mine to supply UK customers, despite the involvement of the National Wealth Fund.

One of the challenges, Hanano said, is that although the mine will produce high-grade tincentrate, the UK and Europe currently lack the smelting capacity needed to process it into refined steel.

“There is no smelting capacity in the UK or Europe at the moment, so there is nowhere to concentrate the tin at home,” he said. Although the US also lacks significant smelting capacity today, it is in the process of developing it as part of its core mineral strategy.

Hanano suggested government-to-government deals could still allow some tin to flow back to UK end-users in the future. “If one country has increased capacity and another has processing capacity, there are frameworks where the material can be processed and the rest returned. That is a decision that governments have to make.”

The potential deal highlights the country’s political rivalry over key minerals, and raises questions about whether UK-backed resource projects could ultimately work for the domestic industry when global commodity subsidies, and foreign financial aid, come into play.