The type, a pioneering geothermal rum distillery assignment, is set to start from scratch after wasting a war over plans to move to the Cornwall firecracker race track site. Matthew Clifford believes his vision of the £10 million rum distillery and maturation allocation at United Downs have benefited Cornwall in the long run.
He said the facility would have been more than just a “rum warehouse” and had planned a true platform for studies and progression to showcase Cornwall’s geothermal technology, know-how and potential. has been using it alone since 2018, Mr Clifford said investors have stayed away from the allocation, leaving it dead in the water for now, due to the bad press and toxicity it generates when he believes there would have been responses that could have benefited all parties, if other people had taken the time to take a look at the program seriously, holistic and would have kept an open mind.
The master plan collapsed after a wave of a crusade to save The United Downs Raceway was followed through a building permit rejected by Cornwall Council, which also owns the land and agreed to lease it to the project.
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“I’ve been so affected by the Banger United Downs racing issue that it’s become toxic, that I haven’t raised a single pound of investment yet,” he said. “It was actually unfair. I have never come here to fight with anyone. It has motivated me to do something positive. I think it would have been a world-class facility that would have attracted visitors to a Cornish domain that is rarely well known for anything these days.
“It would have been a fantastic spectacle for Cornwall’s green technology industry: a geothermal rum distillery heated through the product of a geothermal power plant and a lithium mining plant. I am firmly convinced that this would have led to the site and its commercial heritage in the long run rather than keeping it frozen in time.
Clifford, a former North Sea search and rescue pilot who also introduced his own gin distillery called Twelve Keys in Norfolk in reference to sixteenth-century alchemists who wrote a treatise on the processing of base metals and other pieces in gold, obtained a building permit. for its plan for an ancient tin mine in a futuristic distillery and maturation under a biome similar to those of the Eden Project heated through the hot rocks deep in the Earth’s crust two years ago. The land had been home to Cornwall’s only motor racing track for decades, but had been booked through the Cornish Development Council, sparking mass protests from racing fans.
However, his grand vision, which he says would have created 30 jobs in one of the poorest areas of Cornwall, has turned into a three-way “battle” with historic England and stock racing fans.
Mr. Clifford’s plans for the distillery were first unveiled in October 2020. This sparked an immediate outcry in the domain with United Downs Raceway and Banger Racing enthusiasts fearing that their track, which has been on site for over 50 years, would be demolished and the game, adding the popular Speedway, would be left homeless in Cornwall.
The racecourse and its supporters staged a crusade against the distillery saying it would “kill” motorsport in the duchy. Nearly 9,000 other people signed a petition to save the racecourse. Clifford said he approached the owners of the Perranporth airfield to see if a race track and charm can be installed on the site so that Cornish Geothermal Distillery Company and United Downs Raceway can have a long career in Cornwall.
Historic England has also raised concerns about the impact the rum distillery would have on the World Heritage site at the United Downs, near Redruth, while banger racing enthusiasts have launched a crusade to see their 60-year-old track preserved in situ. for the foreseeable long term and give your game a position to grow in Cornwall. A former Formula 1 racing driving force even threw his hat in the ring and subsidized a crusade to save United Downs Raceway.
The contractor’s reaction to historic England was that the distillery and guest centre would have noticed an investment of £500,000 on the site to decontaminate, inspect, repair and the first six acres of the site, adding all the heritage features even before the first geothermal distillery biome. Appeared.
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Cornwall Council planners eventually rejected permission for the maturation biome, geothermal energy centre and guest centre which added a shop, café and bar on the grounds on 14 October last year, even though the local authority had an agreement to lease the land to the distillery. This meant that last fall the long term banger racing was still in jeopardy and the game staged what was meant to be its last run in October 2021.
He said: “It was a commercial wasteland that the council was looking for to regenerate. People think it was all done behind closed doors, but it wasn’t. Everything we have done has been done and openly. We sought to create anything that wasn’t just a rum deposit, it would have helped expand new generation and create jobs to expand it. The truth is that we cannot continue with the lease.
“We came here not to disappoint the network, but to create jobs. It turns out that politics got in the way and the net around the trail is something that Cornwall Council deserves to have found a solution to rather than confronting each of us. “one more.
After some other political antics this winter, banger racing at United Downs Raceway was allowed to continue for some other year at least after Cornwall Council to maintain the prestige quo for the time being.
While its £10 million geothermal rum distillery allocation in its current form is in tatters, M. Clifford is not yet in a position to throw in the towel. His vision is narrowed and in the coming weeks he will launch a miniature edition of his plan with a handful of participants in the shipment that will include a rum distillery, a shelf domain and a geothermal heat exchanger so he can connect to Cornwall’s original geothermal system. holes in the rosemanowes quarry near Penryn. La Shaper granite quarry has 3 holes that were drilled into the earth in the 1970s to see if the prospective geothermal energy was there, but the generation was not in a position.
Clifford said the purpose of the rum production pilot allocation, for which he will fund through the crowd, is to further validate the generation and produce enough rum in the five weeks in which he has raised enough money to lease the geothermal drilling wells to cover the investment. After that, he hopes to move the shipping boxes to the edge of the GEL-run geothermal plant in United Downs and expand from there.
“It will validate things for investors and help us rebuild relationships with the network away from the toxicity of the United Downs circuit and show other people that we’re not really here to fight with anyone. Despite public perceptions, we are not Cornwall’s enemy. or the road network. It’s tricky to attract foreign investment to Cornwall, but if it works and Cornwall doesn’t need to, we would seriously go elsewhere, which would be a real embarrassment.