French metals and mining firm Imerys SA has taken an 80% controlling stake in a joint venture with British Lithium to start producing the battery metal from a U.K. deposit.

The deal is a shot in the arm for the U.K.’s nascent lithium industry, where several start-ups are vying to build new mines and plants but face a tough funding environment. The U.K.’s Critical Minerals Association in 2023 said U.K. miners “rarely receive interest or funding from private finance, and government funds don’t provide enough financing to truly aid projects.”

Imerys owns land in Cornwall holding the U.K.’s largest known source of the metal, and privately held British Lithium has been developing the deposit since 2017. British Lithium recently produced the metal on a pilot scale using in-house processing technologies.

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Imerys — which is listed in Paris and has a market value of about $3.3 billion — will now work with British Lithium to bring the mine into production, it said in a June 29 statement. It’s too early to estimate the precise cost of the project, but it’s likely to run into hundreds of millions of euros, Imerys CEO Alessandro Dazza said in a subsequent emailed statement.

The companies will aim to produce 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate from the mine annually, which would be enough to meet about two-thirds of the country’s projected battery demands by 2030. Imerys is also developing a mine in France and will be the largest integrated lithium producer in Europe once both projects are online, it said.

The terms of the British Lithium deal weren’t disclosed.