UK lithium miner backed by City tycoons launches fundraise

A start-up backed by a roster of City names including Crispin Odey is launching a £6 million fundraising to advance its dream of drilling for lithium in the Pennines.
Northern Lithium, founded in 2017 by Richard Morecombe, now an executive director at the investment bank Panmure Liberum, has completed a 30-day pumping test at a site in the northeast of England; it said that this had exceeded expectations.
The company plans to tap high net worth individuals and retail investors to raise £6 million for its next tests as it eyes commercial production by 2027.
Northern Lithium’s shareholders include Rich Ricci, the chief executive of Panmure Liberum; Martin Gilbert, the former chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management; stockbroker Crispin Odey; and the Duke of Northumberland. Morecombe is the chairman and the biggest investor.
Nick Pople, Northern Lithium’s managing director, said the drilling test results were “a very important proof-of-concept stage” showing high flow rates at two boreholes. “The long-term pump tests that we have now performed have taken us to the next stage of confirming the commercial potential of this project.”
Lithium is a lightweight metal valued for its role in batteries for electric vehicles. Demand for it is expected to boom as EVs take off. Northern Lithium wants to extract the metal from brines in granite under the Pennines at depths of up to 450 metres, and then to separate the metal in a processing plant and reinject the liquid into the ground. The Pennines are thought to be one of two prospective areas for lithium mining in the UK, the other being Cornwall.
Until now, Northern Lithium has been funded by shareholders and by government grants via the Automotive Transformation Fund. Pople said it would launch a fundraising on Crowdcube, the crowd-funding platform, imminently.
He said he hoped the company’s products would ultimately be sold to car and battery makers in the UK, such as Nissan and AESC, both based in Sunderland. “This is meeting UK demand through UK-sourced brines, UK-developed technology and UK process engineering expertise. Ideally, [we will supply] a UK end market as well.”