Vision 2035: Critical Minerals Strategy

Critical minerals are essential to the UK’s economy, national security, and clean energy transition. UK economic resilience is a core objective of the UK’s Industrial Strategy. As foundational inputs to sectors driving the Industrial Strategy, critical minerals are vital to achieving the government’s mission of stimulating long-term economic growth. However, the global geopolitical landscape and complex supply chains pose persistent challenges to securing these vital resources. In this global, dynamic context, a new approach to critical minerals is required.

This new, targeted Critical Minerals Strategy sets the UK’s long-term ambition for securing critical minerals and harnessing our competitive advantage in recycling and innovative midstream processing – the transformation of mined or recycled materials into refined or upgraded forms suitable for manufacturing. This approach is based on proactively addressing market challenges and anticipating future demand for key minerals to ensure a reliable, sustainable and future-proof supply of critical minerals.

Achieving our ambitions requires a whole-of-society effort – from the choices we make about recycling our old smartphones, through to the technologies we adopt to warm our homes, like heat pumps. Critical minerals are embedded throughout the UK economy, in the new technology consumers buy, the IT our businesses rely on, and in our critical national infrastructure.

The UK’s global positioning on critical minerals shares similarities with partners but also reflects distinct national characteristics. As a net importer of critical minerals, the UK faces strategic vulnerabilities, shared by partners such as the EU. Like the EU, we depend on geographically concentrated global supply chains for key sectors such as advanced manufacturing and defence. Unlike major producing countries, our domestic mining sector is smaller in scale, but it remains an important contributor to global markets.

In the context of increasing state intervention in critical mineral markets, the UK must prioritise how best to deploy its resources to achieve its aims. So, the UK must set out a path which reflects our unique set of strengths in securing critical minerals for the UK.

To reduce our vulnerability, the UK will make strategic use of its own available mineral resources and capabilities. At the same time, we will work with international partners, whether net importers similar to the UK, such as the EU, or major producers, like Canada or Australia, to build more resilient and diversified supply chains. By leveraging our strengths – such as world-class research and development, midstream processing and recycling capabilities, and vibrant capital markets – we will secure a resilient, sustainable supply of critical minerals for the Industrial Strategy’s 8 growth-driving sectors.

To focus efforts across government and support collaboration with industry, we have 2 key policy objectives:

• optimise domestic production

• build resilient UK and global supply networks

Optimising domestic production of critical minerals will help protect UK supply against global trade and supply chain disruptions. It is key that the UK makes the most of its mineral deposits while cultivating our midstream processing and recycling to help enable a circular economy and reduce the impact of external shocks.

We will do so by supporting UK businesses through our strong public finance offer, including the National Wealth Fund (NWF) and UK Export Finance (UKEF). We will provide support on energy prices for eligible businesses, including a new British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme (BICS) and will launch a consultation on eligibility for the scheme shortly.

We will support permitting for innovative projects through the Environment Agency’s priority tracked service and understand and support the skills required in the UK, in collaboration with Skills England and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). And following the 2025 Spending Review, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) will provide funding support of up to £50 million for critical mineral projects in the UK, as part of the wider innovation landscape.

We will work with industry to explore a demand aggregation platform to map their demand for critical minerals across the UK. This will support government and industry to have a much richer picture of UK industrial demand across many downstream sectors. In doing so, it will enable better decisions on where to target government engagement and support to help UK companies invest to secure a critical mineral supply internationally and de-risk their further business.

We will also consider options to implement targeted, industry-led resilience measures for the UK defence sector. Measures could include stockpiling, including through procurement mechanisms. This aligns with the Ministry of Defence’s commitments to build resilience in critical mineral supplies for UK defence and use its procurement levers to promote resilient defence supply chains set out in the Defence Industrial Strategy 2025 sector plan.

To ensure the UK has a secure, diverse supply of critical minerals and to limit our exposure to global shocks, we will support UK industry and identify investment opportunities in shared supply chains by building and leveraging international partnerships. Our international partners will benefit from the UK’s world class capital markets, financial services sector, public finance institutions, world leading academic research, technological innovation, and geological, mining and technical expertise, in developing these deeper partnerships.

We will support this more targeted international approach through engagement in multilateral forums such as the G7, G20, Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), International Energy Agency (IEA) and NATO, along with promoting responsible and transparent supply chains through initiatives such as the Global Clean Power Alliance (GCPA). These multilateral organisations and initiatives play an important role in coordinating investment and action on supply chains, setting common standards and promoting responsible and transparent supply chains.

Finally, to support our 2 key policy objectives, we are building on the existing list of critical minerals by also introducing the UK’s first growth minerals list. This will complement the Critical Mineral Intelligence Centre’s UK 2024 criticality assessment by anticipating future demand of minerals for the Industrial Strategy’s growth-driving sectors. As we plan for future criticality and growth assessments, we will evaluate which additional minerals and materials will need to be in scope to reflect the UK economy’s growing demands amidst evolving global supply chain dynamics.

To drive progress towards Vision 2035, we are setting out our ambition in tangible terms, ensuring progress can be measured and tracked. We recognise the fast-changing nature of the critical minerals landscape, so we will be agile and responsive to new, emerging challenges in our strategy implementation while ensuring we are delivering our long-term vision.

Read the full Critical Minerals Strategy below.