This web page presents an overview of the UK CMIC's work from Year 1 (financial year (FY) 2022 to 2023) to Year 5 (FY 2026 to 2027), highlighting completed deliverables and current activities. In addition to the specific projects or reports noted here, CMIC maintains an active programme of collaboration internationally, across the UK Government and with external stakeholders.

Financial year 2026 to 2027

Waste classification

The ambition for a more circular economy relies on the ability to access and process secondary feedstocks, such as end-of-life products or materials. Typically, most products or materials are classified as waste when collected. This classification often remains despite some beneficiation or processing, which can make it harder or more expensive to manage and treat these flows for the recovery of contained metals, minerals or materials. For example, when a lithium-ion battery is collected, it is typically shredded and converted to a bulk material known as 'black mass'. The classification of black mass as waste makes it more expensive to manage and therefore harder to reprocess for the metals and materials contained within it.

Any changes to the regulatory classification of wastes would need to be mindful of handling and processing risks, as well as regulatory frameworks, to ensure successful reprocessing and material recovery.

This project will:

• conduct a high-level review of the status of waste classification in the UK and similar frameworks in selected jurisdictions (possibly Europe or Japan)
• conduct selected stakeholder engagement
• develop relevant case studies

The project should help support the way forward for the UK to improve circularity in line with the UK's Critical Minerals Strategy, Vision 2035.

Economic interlinkages

The dependencies between different economic sectors on critical minerals is an important aspect of understanding the criticality of different commodities. In other words, if one sector faces difficulty due to a supply disruption, this may cause cascading effects through a wide range of other sectors, causing significant economic impacts. Based on exploratory research by CMIC during FY 2025 to 2026 in the 'Future of the criticality assessment' study, new economic datasets for the UK economy now allow a more comprehensive analysis and assessment of these relationships and knock-on economic effects. This means that the resilience of the UK economy can be 'stress tested' by exploring scenarios of disruption and how they may spread through the UK economy, based on the economic links between different economic sectors. This allows the role of critical minerals and the specific economic sectors they support to be assessed, and their resilience better understood with respect to potential disruption scenarios.

Future outlook: metallurgical equipment

Advanced manufacturing is a key pillar of the UK's industrial strategy and important to a wide range of sectors, including the automotive, aerospace, batteries, space, advanced materials and agricultural technology (agri-tech) industries. Metals and chemicals are key raw materials that are needed to manufacture components and products in all of these sectors; however, a wide range of equipment is also required to convert an ore mineral extracted from the ground into an alloy that can be used for advanced manufacturing purposes. Critical minerals are a vital aspect of the metallurgical equipment required to facilitate this process; for example, manganese and iron are needed for ore crushers during beneficiation processes and nickel is needed for acid corrosion-resistant reactor vessels during refining processes.

This project will be a scoping study on the critical minerals required to manufacture the metallurgical equipment needed for the beneficiation, refining and alloying stages of the raw material midstream supply chains that are the basis for advanced manufacturing in the UK.

Future outlook: pharmaceuticals and health

The medical sector relies on a complex array of technologies for diagnosis and treatment of numerous medical conditions. In turn, these technologies often rely on particular elements to achieve their functionality, such as magnets in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners. The magnets are reliant on rare earth elements, such as neodymium, which are designated as critical minerals for the UK. Furthermore, although medicines themselves are typically not made of critical minerals (being organic in nature), their manufacture often involves specialist catalysts and other minerals or materials that can often be critical.

This project will conduct a deep dive into the critical minerals required for medical technologies and the production of pharmaceuticals in the UK. The final scope will be developed at the initial stages of the project. The study will conduct a detailed literature review of key medical technologies as well as the manufacture of pharmaceuticals in the UK and will include stakeholder engagement and selected case studies. The assessment will help to ensure that the critical minerals that underpin the medical sector are better understood, supporting the UK's industrial strategy, where the health sector is one of the eight principal industrial sectors which drive economic growth.

Foresight: grid-scale batteries

Grid-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) are a rapidly growing area of the energy transition. BESS provide short-duration power supplies, typically of the order of hours and scales of 100 MW or more. Around the world, BESS are being installed and linked to large-scale solar and wind farms, leading to recharging by renewable energy and, typically, a discharge cycle during the evening demand peaks. The types of battery technologies can vary, ranging from lithium-ion based chemistries to redox flow batteries (amongst others). Overall, it can be expected that BESS will provide a growing role in the UK electrical grid to support decarbonisation and net zero ambitions.

The project will be delivered as a foresight study, leading to a projection of the potential growth of BESS to 2050 under a variety of national grid future energy scenarios and quantifying the critical minerals required to achieve it.

Criticality assessment upgrades

With a continuously expanding amount of data used in criticality assessments, continued monitoring and data processing require upgrading and semi-automation. These upgrades will improve our workflow systems, making them more efficient, expanding on the number of HS codes analysed and focusing on large-volume materials (for example, iron/steel, aluminium, etc.) that have high economic value, in preparation for the next full criticality assessment.

Previous years

Contact

For questions regarding the project please email the CMIC (enquire@ukcmic.org).

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