Is the North East on the cusp of achieving the world's first circular supply chain for EV batteries?

A rather barren-looking former cement works site, nestled in the otherwise beautiful surroundings of Weardale, County Durham, is a critical part of what could be the world’s first entirely circular electric vehicle (EV) production cluster.

The Eastgate works was demolished more than 20 years ago, but it is where Weardale Lithium has recently secured planning permission to build the country’s first lithium extraction facility. It hopes to take underground water - known as ‘geothermal brines’ - from beneath the North Pennines, before processing it to get lithium, a soft silvery metal which is ideally suited for use in batteries. The UK is estimated to need 15,000 tonnes of the stuff each year to feed the EV industry.

Stewart Dickson is the former investment banker and mining expert who leads the business, which has already used grant funding from the Government’s Automotive Transformation Fund to complete trials of its technology. The company says that work has been highly successful, and it is now pressing ahead with multimillion-pound plans to build a demonstration plant next to nearby boreholes - where it will produce battery grade lithium carbonate on-site.

Only 50 miles away on Teesside (“next door” in the minerals world), London Stock Exchange-listed company Alkemy Capital Investments is hoping to develop what it says is Europe’s largest low-carbon, lithium refinery. It hopes that facility can produce 15% of the continent’s requirements of lithium hydroxide - the next stage in the battery and EV supply chain. Lithium carbonate is the feedstock for that process and while not all of the Weardale-derived compound will go to Teesside, the two firms are already working together to create a supply chain.

With these two projects set up, North East lithium can then be taken to AESC’s gigafactories in Sunderland, made into batteries which are then put into vehicles at the nearby Nissan plant, before lithium is extracted from end-of-life batteries by Altilium Metals - which has been working in the region and has plans to build a facility on Teesside. Newcastle’s Connected Energy is also pioneering the use of second life batteries for storage systems.

Colin Herron, a prominent voice in the electric vehicle industry and heavily involved in the Faraday Institution, is energised by the possibilities - and says an all-encompassing industry in the North East is possible within two years, pending commercial agreements coming to fruition.

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