The Department for Business and Trade, with DSIT, published "Vision 2035: Critical Minerals Strategy" on 22 November 2025 — the UK's first dedicated critical-minerals strategy under the Starmer government, superseding the withdrawn 2022 strategy. DBT commits up to GBP 50 million for new critical mineral projects on top of GBP 165 million in existing support, with the National Wealth Fund providing equity backing (Cornish Lithium GBP 24m in 2023 plus a further GBP 31m commitment in 2025; Cornish Metals GBP 28.6m in 2025; South Crofty Tin GBP 26.8m). Sets 2035 targets of 10% of UK industrial demand from domestic production (extraction + processing + refining), 20% from recycling, and a hard floor of 50,000 tonnes lithium carbonate equivalent produced domestically. Strategy is consciously midstream-and-recycling-tilted rather than upstream-extraction race; pillars are (i) optimise domestic production, (ii) resilient global supply networks via partnerships with US, EU, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, India, Japan (plus Kazakhstan rhenium/vanadium and continued China engagement), (iii) circular economy / recycling, (iv) responsible supply chains.

Analyst notesShow

Mechanism

"Vision 2035" reframes the UK's posture as a niche midstream-and-recycling play rather than an extraction-race participant — the same self-positioning logic the 2023 UK National Semiconductor Strategy applied to chips. The fiscal envelope is modest by G7 standards: a GBP 50m new commitment plus GBP 165m of pre-existing support gives an aggregate ~GBP 215m public portfolio, with most of the heavy lifting expected from the National Wealth Fund's equity stakes (Cornish Lithium, Cornish Metals, South Crofty Tin) and from private capital catalysed by improved planning, permitting, and energy-cost treatment.

Three structural moves matter:

Hard 2035 production floors. 10% of UK industrial demand to be met

by UK extraction + processing + refining; 20% from recycling; a hard 50,000 tonne LCE lithium target. These are the first quantitative domestic-production benchmarks the UK has set for critical minerals, paralleling the EU CRMA's 10% / 40% / 25% benchmarks but pitched lower.

Demand-side end-use signalling. The strategy explicitly aligns with

the eight Industrial Strategy 2025 (IS-2025) growth sectors — advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence, life sciences, digital/AI, professional services, financial services, creative — to coordinate off-take and procurement signals across departments. Defence/MoD demand for tungsten, REEs, gallium, germanium is the highest-confidence procurement channel.

Demand projections. Copper demand projected at 3.62 Mt by 2035

(nearly doubling); lithium demand at 399,200 tonnes LCE (~1,100% increase). These are the planning baselines against which the 50,000 t domestic floor sits — i.e., domestic production covers ~12-13% of projected 2035 lithium demand, consistent with the 10% headline.

Downstream implications

EWU (UK equity): marginal. The strategy is too small to move the

index, but Cornish Lithium / Cornish Metals private-listed exposure + Johnson Matthey (LSE: JMAT, PGM refiner) + Vale Base Metals Clydach refinery + Rolls-Royce defence-end-use demand channel give thin but identifiable beneficiary cluster.

REMX / LIT / PICK: net-marginally positive. UK joins the

US-EU-Canada-Australia FTA-partner pool of allied processing capacity the IRA §30D mineral-sourcing test and EU CRMA ≤65% single-country cap reward. Allied-processing benefit is now a five-jurisdiction story rather than four.

South Crofty + Cornish Lithium: NWF equity puts public balance

sheet behind two of the three flagship UK critical-minerals projects. South Crofty (tin, NWF GBP 26.8m via reopening support) is the nearest-term producer; Cornish Lithium's Trelavour DLE plant is the flagship lithium project (NWF GBP 24m + GBP 31m additional 2025 commitment).

Defence procurement channel. The IS-2025 alignment plus DSIT

involvement gives MoD a structured demand-side lever for tungsten, REEs, gallium, germanium — areas where China dual-use export controls (gallium/germanium July 2023, graphite Oct 2023, broader October 2024 expansion) created the supply-security gap this strategy is responding to.

Open questions

Is the GBP 50m new envelope front-loaded or spread across the

10-year horizon? The strategy doesn't specify annual cash drawdown.

Will the Subsidy Control Act 2022 framework (filed:

2022-04-28-uk-subsidy-control-act) be used for additional named-recipient grants beyond NWF equity, or will all public capital flow via NWF? Net effect on subsidy headroom under the WTO ASCM rules is the constraint.

Does the UK seek a critical-minerals partnership analogue to the

2026-04-24 EU-US Critical Minerals Strategic Partnership? The seven named priority partners (US, EU, CA, AU, SA, IN, JP) suggest bilateral agreements are likely but none are named in the strategy itself.

50,000 t LCE domestic floor by 2035 implies Cornish Lithium

Trelavour + United Downs + Wheal Clifford ramp to commercial scale this decade. Project timelines are the binding constraint; the strategy provides public capital and planning relief but cannot itself accelerate geological/permitting delivery.

Sources

Primary: GOV.UK — Vision 2035: Critical Minerals Strategy (HTML) · UK Parliament Deposited Papers — Critical Minerals Strategy PDF (DEP2025-0774) · Hansard — Critical Minerals Strategy debate, 24 Nov 2025

Secondary: Mining.com — UK to meet 30% of critical mineral needs at home by 2035 · Benchmark Source — How ambitious is the UK's critical mineral strategy?