It is not every day that the former boss of HSBC is found trudging through the mud of a Cornish mining site. But this was a special occasion.
On an overcast day in early August, John Flint, now head of the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB), descended on Trelavour Downs in black wellies and a hi-vis jacket, alongside the Treasury minister Andrew Griffith, to mark the government-owned bank’s £24m investment in Cornish Lithium: the company hoping to jump-start a local lithium supply chain for electric vehicles and the wider renewable energy sector.
