Poldark returns

Every now and then Britain appears on the brink of recapturing an atom of its mining past – and not just in the imaginative realm of Poldark…

Such a moment came in 2015 when Wolf Minerals of Australia dug up Victorian era geological data about strata in the Southwest near Plymouth, suggesting one of the largest tungsten resources outside China. Investment followed, earth moving and process engineering began, and locals who had petitioned their council for road improvements suddenly got their wish.

The Drakelands tungsten mine near Plymouth UK as I saw it on commissioning day in 2015

Of course, it closed in 2018 - not long after it opened - and a further attempt was made in 2019 before it apparently closed for good.

That was then…

Today, the disruptive tungsten money is in mining in the UK. Suddenly investors who would once have been ejected from the boardroom for the mere suggestion, are lauded for their perspicacity in promoting the prospect of a well-run UK mine abiding by health and safety standards, European salary and pension costs, and environmental controls that could only be dreamt of in a developing country. All possible because security of supply is now more important than mere price.

A metal such as tungsten, virtually un-substitutable in applications as diverse as wear parts, super alloy additions, and cutting tools, which in the last 70 years reduced its diverse supply base from Russia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Korea, Portugal, Australia – to merely China with its 80% dominance of world production, has suddenly made the UK southwest astonishingly attractive.

So it is that the Plymouth tungsten resource, at various times called both Drakelands and Hemerdon, has now become a case history in how mining will always remain the longest of longest-term bets. Suddenly, the balance of scales between pure production costs and geopolitics have swung the other way; with the present happy outcome perhaps a source of hope for long term thinking in a country trying to build a modicum of resilience. That is to say - for the UK to become a country less dependent upon factors in far off places about which we think we know more than we do.

The lucky mining investor in the Plymouth region is Tungsten West who raised £41.4 mln in Feb 2026 to build on the work already started over ten years before.

This writer at least wishes them well.

The shaking as it was under Wolf Minerals ownership in 2015

By Anthony Lipmann 20.05.26

A version of this article was published by Lord Copper www.lord-copper.com