Silicon Valley meets geoscience

Jeremy Wrathall, CEO, Cornish Lithium

At Intelligent Mining: Disruptive Forces Transforming the Industry’s Future
View the Slides > Watch the Talk >

Speaker’s Biography

A mining engineer by training, Jeremy initially worked in the South African gold mining industry and then followed an investment banking career, starting as a mining analyst in 1988. Over the last 30 years he has held various roles including Global Head of Mining Equities at Deutsche Bank, Global Head of Mining Equity Sales at UBS and, most recently, Head – Global Natural Resources at Investec Bank in London. In 2017 he left the investment banking industry and founded his own company, Cornish Lithium Ltd, where he serves as the Chief Executive Officer.

Need to know

The company is focused on exploring for lithium within the hot springs that naturally occur beneath the surface in and around Cornish granites, with the aim to create a new high-tech, environmentally responsible mining industry in the region. Lithium was first identified in hot springs in 1864 by Professor Miller of Kings College, London, who noted that the occurrence of “so large an amount of lithium” in hot springs could be commercially significant. At that time there was little use for lithium and no method of commercial extraction. Such occurrences continued to be of great interest and were sampled and monitored in several mines right up until the closure of South Crofty in 1998.