Much to celebrate at the Christmas Cornish Mining Sundowner

A slightly disappointing turnout for last night's Christmas sundowner at Tyacks in Camborne, usually the most popular sundowner of the year.

Despite the relatively low numbers, there was much to celebrate as Cornwall was put firmly on the map at the Resourcing Tomorrow event in London at the end of last month, where Cornwall as a region was awarded the Most Improved Mining Jurisdiction Award, the other nominees being Egypt, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia and Namibia. Cornwall, as a region, was recognised for the revival of its mining fortunes, as a result of Cornish Lithium and Cornish Metals securing significant investment to advance their exciting mineral extraction projects.

Resourcing Tomorrow was Europe's largest mining event, dedicated to accelerating the energy transition. Attracting over 2,000 registrants from over 100 countries, the conference welcomed the whole mining value chain, including global mining and energy companies, investors, government representatives, researchers, educators, regulators, suppliers, and operators. Government delegations from Australia, Armenia, Canada, Chad, Nigeria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Czech Republic, Portugal, the UK and the USA were all in attendance. 

At the same conference the Exploration Discovery of the Year Award was presented to Cornish Lithium for their discovery of extensive lithium-enriched brines beneath the surface of Cornwall.

It has been an excellent year for Cornish Lithium, work continuing towards the commercialisation of the geothermal waters projects and significant progress also being made at its Trelavour Hard Rock Project (see also August Mining Sundowner).

There was more good news from Cornish Metals and progress on the regeneration of the South Crofty tin mine, where dewatering of the old workings has been underway since early November (see October summary) with up to 25,000m3 per day of water pumped directly from the mine and treated at the Water Treatment Plant (WTP). Treated water is being discharged into the Red River which is having a positive effect on the water quality of the river downstream of the discharge point and the water discharged is powering a 75 kW hydro-turbine located ahead of the discharge point that generates up to 20% of the power consumed by the WTP. And it is encouraging that the water level within the underground workings is falling at a faster than expected rate.

Cornwall has a rich mining industry and one of its greatest custodians is my old Camborne School of Mines colleague Tony Clarke, who made a welcome appearance at the sundowner last night. 

Tony has a huge collection of Cornish mining photos take over a period of some 60 years and he has spent the last two years enhancing over 9,000 colour slides for archiving in the Cornwall Record Office in Redruth. Appropriately as we are only three days from Christmas Day, I leave you with this great Cornish mining landscape photo taken by Tony, and on behalf of all of us at MEI, I would like to wish you all sincere best wishes for the holiday season and a peaceful and happy 2024. And a big thank you to all of you who have sent us Christmas greetings by email and post.

Finally, just to announce that the next sundowner will be at the County Arms Hotel,Truro, on Thursday January 18th from 5.30pm.