February 2026

The UK and the US have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation on critical mineral supply chains.

The MoU aims to boost investment and coordination across mining, separation and processing—supporting sectors like automotive, defence, clean energy and electronics. It aligns with the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy, including a goal to limit reliance on any single country to no more than 60% of imports of a given mineral by 2035. The UK is backing the initiative with up to £50m in new funding, with both countries also seeking to streamline permitting and counter non-market pricing practices.

The UK–US MoU on critical minerals is a meaningful signal: governments are moving way from diversifying supply to coordinating policy tools and investment to do it.

A few things stand out:

1) Despite clear targets, execution is hard.
The UK’s ambition to avoid sourcing more than 60% of any single critical mineral from one country by 2035 is a strong north star. But targets only become reality when there’s a steady flow of permitted, financially viable projects and that’s where bottlenecks appear.

2) The real competition is for investable projects, not just minerals.
If the aim is to catalyse private capital into mining, processing and separation, then investors and lenders need decision-grade economics early: repeatable models, transparent assumptions, downside cases, and comparability across projects.

3) Preventing non-market pricing practices will increase the need for robust scenario planning.
As policy tools, permitting timelines, and pricing dynamics evolve, the industry will need to stress-test project value across realistic scenarios (capex inflation, price cycles, recoveries, fiscal terms). That’s how you avoid being caught out when the policy environment shifts.

4) £50m is a start — but the multiplier is how fast capital can underwrite decisions.
Public funding helps de-risk the early steps, but the scale-up depends on how quickly teams can move from studies and disclosures to bankable investment cases.

At Stormlands, we’re building analytics + AI tooling that turns technical reports into interactive valuation models so teams can evaluate assets consistently, run scenarios faster, and compare opportunities across the mining lifecycle — from early-stage project screening through to financing and operations.

Because in critical minerals, resilience isn’t just about geology.
It’s about being able to interrogate the data easily and having confidence in both the financial and environmental sustainability of the asset—so supply chains are secured responsibly, not just quickly.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-us-sign-memorandum-of-understanding-on-critical-minerals