A County Durham company hoping to extract lithium from beneath the region’s countryside to use in electric car batteries has secured a six-figure funding deal.
Natural resources company Weardale Lithium Limited has secured a £613,000 joint funding package with Tees Valley Lithium Ltd to drive forward its plans. The two companies last year signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore the potential to produce and refine lithium in the North East.
Their project is focused on novel methods for the production and refinement of lithium, extracted from geothermal brine resources, in a robust route from ‘borehole to battery’. The funding – which includes a grant of approximately £430,000 from the UK’s national innovation agency Innovate UK – will advance feasibility studies and scale-up activities to further a battery-supply chain industrial hub, and include the evaluation of the potential for Weardale Lithium to supply lithium to Tees Valley Lithium for refining.
Alkemy Capital Investments plc (LON:ALK, FRA: JV2) is focussed on developing projects in the energy transition metals sector. Alkemy’s wholly-owned subsidiary Tees Valley Lithium (TVL) is developing a state of the art lithium hydroxide plant at Teesside, UK. TVL is Europe’s largest independent and sustainable lithium hydroxide producer.