Industry Minister Sarah Jones will confirm a new Critical Minerals Strategy will be published in 2025, in a speech to the Resourcing Tomorrow conference on Tuesday (3 December).
Speaking at Europe’s largest mining event, with over 100 companies from the global mining supply chain represented, Industry Minister Sarah Jones is expected to say:
“We need critical minerals for everything and we’ll need a lot more if we want a thriving car sector, a world-leading tech ecosystem, and secure renewable energy.
“And that’s why I am announcing today that we will launch a new Critical Minerals Strategy in 2025.
“This Strategy will support the industries of tomorrow, be explicitly targeted at the UK, evaluate the impacts on people’s lives, deliver for businesses and create new jobs across the country.”
The new Strategy is expected to be published in Spring 2025, and the government will bring forward further details on this in the new year.
The government will also launch its Industrial Strategy next year which will give businesses the certainty they need to invest in UK industry, as part of the government’s Invest 2035 vision to boost growth in the UK’s most important sectors.
The new Critical Minerals Strategy will be vital for delivering the confidence businesses need in the UK’s industrial sectors, by ensuring they have the resilient critical minerals supply chains they need for the next ten years and beyond.
Minister Jones is also expected to set out how it will be distinct from the previous governments’ critical minerals strategies by adopting a more targeted and long-term approach and focus, including collaborating with international partners to secure supplies, working more closely with partners in forums like the Minerals Security Partnership, and using data at the heart of its development.
The strategy will also set out the government’s role in helping UK universities partner globally to build on their world-leading expertise; for example, the University of Birmingham’s rare earth magnet expertise, and Camborne School of Mines’ mining engineering work.
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