WESTERN MORNING NEWS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18 2017 9WMN-E01-S28 NEWS SATURDAY NOVEMBER 18 2017 WESTERN MORNING NEWS WMN-E01-S2 westernmorningnews.co.uk

‘CONVERSATIONin

with...

Simon Parker meets mineral explorationmanager Brett Grist, who believes hiscompany could be the first for a generation toextract tin from the Cornish earth

Exploring theprospects of a21st centurymining boom

Had you visited Redmoor in1850, the scene would havebeen one of feverish industry,with a workforce of more than250 engaged in the extractionof huge quantities of tin,copper, lead and arsenic.

Arriving at the site today, it’sdifficult to imagine the caco-phony of pumping engines,winding engines, crushing en-gines and stamps, all workingat full tilt. Gone are the smoke-belching chimneys, gone arethe mules heaving wagons,gone are the water wheels. Inthere place are green fields,housing and a nondescript in-dustrial estate, the sort foundin every town in the land.

This is Kelly Bray, a dis-persed community close toCallington that grew uparound the mine and railway,and clung on after the stationclosed and the line was torn up.Perhaps as an example ofCornish irony, the industrialestate on which the stationonce stood is named BeechingPark. And it’s here that I meetBrett Grist, exploration man-ager for Cornwall ResourcesLimited.

Cornwall Resources re-cently completed a series ofdrilling tests at the site of theformer Redmoor Mine. Theresults were so encouragingthat the firm hopes to sinkfurther holes next year. Withmetal prices rising on soaringinternational demand, Corn-wall’s rich underground re-sources of everything fromtungsten to lithium – as well astin and copper – are once againthe focus of world attention.Most of that attention up tonow has been on South Crofty,near Camborne, where consid-erable investment is beingmade by Canadian miningcompany, Strongbow. A firmcalled Cornish Lithium is alsoin the process of gauging theviability of raising largequantities of lithium, a highlyvaluable element used in arange of gadgets.

However, before we get car-ried away and start heralding anew age of Cornish mining, it’sworth sounding a note of cau-

tion. How many times have webeen here before in recentyears? How many times have Iwritten headlines about a re-vival of Cornish mining andthe prospect of hundreds ofwell-paid jobs, only to have thewhole thing grind to a halt,leaving me with an eggy face?

So I ask Brett if this time it’sfor real. Is the first ton of tin fora generation about to behauled to the surface of aCornish mine? Or is our col-lective enthusiasm about to bedashed yet again?

A man of considerable ex-perience, Brett is not inter-ested in crystal ball-gazing,preferring to base his state-ments on firm facts. Originallyfrom Dartmoor, and now basedin Teignmouth, Brett studiedMining Geology at ImperialCollege London. After gradu-ation, and with little prospectof work in the UK mining in-dustry, he headed first to Aus-tralia’s Kalgoorlie gold fields.There followed stints in Por-tugal, Mali, Ghana, Congo and11 years mining zinc in Yemen,where he ran a project thateven involved creating a newAct of Parliament. With Yemendescending into civil war in2015, and Brett suffering a ser-ious illness, he came home toDevon, where he spotted a jobin East Cornwall.

And it is from the not im-mediately obvious location ofKelly Bray that he and a smallteam of highly qualified geo-logists hope to contribute, atleast in part, to the 21st cen-tury Cornish mining revival. Ifsuccessful, the area could see ajobs boost of up to 200 withinfive years, plus considerableknock-on effects for service in-dustries and local businesses.

The area under considera-tion is currently used for graz-ing. For the past seven months,Cornwall Resources and itspartners, Strategic MineralsPLC and New Age Exploration,have invested around £1mil-lion to carry out a series of 20test drillings in a bid to gaugethe quality and quantity ofminerals below the surface.The main focus is on explor-

ation of tungsten, tin andcopper, and with the results of15 out of the 20 test holesalready in, the signs appear tobe very positive.

Using charts made byminers between the mid-1800sand the 1930s, plus data col-lected by prospectors duringthe 1980s, the team were able toplot the 2017 exploration. Theyare in the process of creating adetailed picture of what’sthere, and the next stage of theproject is to build on that dataand run a full feasibility studyinto whether it will be finan-cially viable to commencemining. Brett says quantitiesof tin and tungsten in theground at Redmoor could beworth a whopping 1.4billiond o l l a r s.

“We have delivered a veryeffective programme and builta fantastic team,” he said. “Wehave been drilling sinceMarch, and completed 20 holesextending to 7,046 metres. Theresults are very positive andthe two companies have agreedto fund phase two on the basisof these results.

“We would like to be in pro-duction as soon as possible be-cause at the moment we arejust spending money – m o rethan one million poundsthrough 2017 – and becausemetal prices are strong andthere is interest in the explor-ation sector in this part of theworld. The investors’ view is:why invest in some far-flungdestination when there are op-portunities here?

“The results from drillingthis year indicate that Red-moor is now among the topfour or five tin/tungsten pro-jects in the world.”

Put like that, it’s a no-brain-er. If you happen to live any-where other than Kelly Bray or

Callington, then plonking afull-scale mining operation inthe heart of these communitiesmakes sound economic sense.But how will it affect the livesof local people?

Brett and his team are wellaware of such fears. He ex-plained that the main differ-ence between the miners of olddoing a bit of exploratory dig-ging back in the day, andt o d ay ’s high-tech operation, isthat environmental and socialconsiderations are to the foreof any project. Working closelywith Callington Town Council,Cornwall Council, the Envir-onment Agency, and others,Cornwall Resources have helda number of open meetingswith local people. And whilethere are the understandableconcerns about lorry move-ments, visual impact and theeffect on house prices, to datethe firm has received no com-plaints. Ultimately it’s a trade-off: any mining activity islikely to be disruptive and tochange the nature of a place,but the up-side is a possible 200well-paid jobs and a majorboost to subsidiary industriesand local businesses.

“We are fortunate in that,generally speaking, there issupport for such a project inthis part of Cornwall,” saidBrett. “Mining is part of theCornish DNA. And the way it’sdone now is very different tothe way it was done in the past– even the way it was done inthe 1980s. We are looking at apotential underground project– not a large open pit devel-opment with a very visible sur-face manifestation. Processingon site would be our expect-ation but it will depend on thescale of the project.”

Whatever happens, KellyBray residents are not going to

wake up tomorrow morning tofind a new Cornish tin mine ontheir doorstep. More testdrilling is planned for nextyear. If the results from thoseback up this year’s data, theproject will move to a pre-feas-ibility study, a feasibility study,planning permissions, and aplethora of licences and leg-alities. However, if all goes toplan, in the not too distantfuture there is a real prospectof tungsten, tin and copper

being brought to the surface inEast Cornwall for the firsttime in a century.

Referring to the fact thatStrongbow is moving towardsa resumption of mining atSouth Crofty, and CornishLithium is delivering prom-ising test results, Brett added:“Just as there were a numberof mines closing in the 1980sand 1990s, we will hopefully beseeing some of them openingag ain.”

‘Just asmineswereclosingin the1980sand1990s,we willhopefullysee someof themopeningagain’

Brett Grist,CornwallResources

Brett Grist(left)examines acore samplewith anothermember ofthe CornwallResourcesteam on adrilling site atKelly Bray inEast Cornwall

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