Mineral Processing Plant

Blue Hills is owned and run by the Wills Family.

We have been producing tin in the valley for 40 years. In the 1960’s Colin Wills produced his first tin concentrates from the beach here using portable equipment and we moved on to this site in 1974.

Our tin ore is gathered along the beautiful North Cornish Coastline having been mined by the sea and made clean by the pounding of the waves along the shore.

It is worked under special licence from the Duchy of Cornwall using hand tools to carefully collect the precious harvest. This type of alluvial tin mining is ancient and being a renewable source has continued for thousands of years.

Today you can learn about this fascinating process on a gentle walk around the site.

Meet the craftsmen who extract the ore, dress it, smelt it, refine it and make it into the final end product. We process rock through to refined metal and use this to produce our range of handcrafted Cornish tin jewellery and giftware.