Cornish Lithium CEO, Jeremy Wrathall

Cornish Lithium has completed its £1.4 million crowdfunding round via Crowdcube.

It is believed to be the first successful crowdfunding campaign by a British mineral exploration company and welcomes more than 1,200 new investors.

The company’s first exploration drill holes, targeting lithium in geothermal waters deep beneath the surface of Cornwall, will be drilled with the funds raised.

It will also accelerate its desktop approach to exploration for other battery metals in Cornwall by using modern computing technology to analyse historic mining records from Cornwall’s mining past.

The Company plans to investigate the possibility of combining geothermal energy and lithium extraction.

CEO, Jeremy Wrathall, said: “We are delighted to have now closed our crowdfunding and to welcome over 1,200 new investors to Cornish Lithium. We are excited to commence our exploratory drill programme later this year and to move our project to the next stage.

“We continue to believe that Cornwall holds significant potential to supply UK industry with the lithium needed to build electric cars and power storage batteries. This will enable the carbon footprint of batteries assembled in the UK to be minimised given that the necessary raw materials will not have to be imported from thousands of miles away.

“Domestic production of lithium and other battery metals would also reduce the dependency of the UK economy on imports and has the potential to create significant employment in Cornwall.”