South Crofty Tin mine located at Pool near Camborne. The last tin mine to close in Cornwall is reborn in 2023. The historic mine ceased to be profitab
South Crofty Tin mine located at Pool near Camborne. The last tin mine to close in Cornwall is reborn in 2023. The historic mine ceased to be profitable due to slump in the price of tin and closed in1997, The mine workings have flooded in the years since and the current owners Cornish Metals Ltd secured £40 million from investors last year, including £25 million from Vision Blue Resources, the investment vehicle run by Mike Davis, 65, known as “Mick the Miner”. This has funded the building of a £7 million water treatment plant that is now switched on, pumping out 25,000 cubic metres of water a day. Drying the mine is expected to take up to 18 months, with water continuing to seep in at a rate of about 6,500 cubic metres a day, and will cost about £10 million in electricity to power the process. Richard Williams, 56, the chief executive of Cornish Metals, said it had installed two submersible pumps suspended down flooded mine shafts, “effectively like two gigantic straws that are going to suck the water out, to 360m depth”. This should give access to an old pump station that the company will revive. It will then use the submersible pumps to extract the remaining water, which is about 870m (2,850ft) below the surface at its deepest point. The treatment plant will purify the water, removing substances such as iron and arsenic, before discharging it into the Red River. Tin prices rose to record highs of about $50,000 per tonne early 2022, but have fallen back to roughly half that level amid a global slump in commodities prices because of weaker demand. However, Williams said that the mine should still be viable, as its operating costs would be less than $20,000 per tonne. Williams said the business believed that South Crofty had the potential to yield a lot more than 80,000 tonnes as there were “vast areas within the mine that have never been explored”. Cornwall UK. 22nd October 2023. Alamy/ Robert Taylor
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