KEEP OUR SEA CHEMICAL FREE

It was a very strange way to find out that Planetary Technologies, the company that had weighed so heavily on our collective community brain for the last two years, was leaving St.Ives Bay for ever.

A bizarre looking email had landed in an account I hadn’t accessed for a while –  it was titled ‘Letters for stakeholders cornwall.docx’ and someone with a planetarytech.com email was trying to work out the right email for me.   I was busy and didn’t really process what I was seeing – the word ‘stakeholders’ always make me switch off and I just thought ‘random Planetary spam’.  But it was odd enough for me to return to it a couple of hours later.  I scrolled down, clicked ‘open’ and everything got very weird.  Suddenly I was in a google document containing loads of letters.  

The first one made me sit up and pay close attention.  It was addressed to one of the directors of South West Water (SWW) and was labelled ‘to be distributed on Thursday 10th April, from Mike’s inbox’.  I checked the date – it was Wednesday 9th April.

I skimmed down and saw this:

‘As you will know, following the trial, we spent time exploring potential alkalinity sources and supply chains. Based on this analysis, the scale-up of operations in Cornwall has been assessed as commercially unviable, and we will not be pursuing a wider programme in the region’.

So this was it.  From the Canadian horses mouth – Planetary Technologies were out of here.  

For the last year Planetary had told us repeatedly that they were committed to their project in St. Ives Bay and they had us listed as an active project.  But despite all the hype – their talk of the amazing potential of the experiment, their great science and community relations – there was just nothing happening on the ground. 

It felt like we were being ghosted by them.

On one hand – this was encouraging.  Maybe our community response had spooked Planetary.  Maybe everything we’d exposed about the shoddy design of their experiment and their cavalier approach to the marine ecosystem had made them back off?  We’d heard whispers from a good source that we were just too much trouble for them.  Too much bad publicity, too little trust. 

On the other hand- Planetary Technologies had insisted for a year that they were just waiting to find a more local source of alkalinity. (Although the image they used to communicate this was a photo of Hawaii which was confusing – see below).  

The uncertainty hovered over us.  It was part of local conversation – on dog walks, in the surf, at the supermarket – locals would often ask me, ‘Whats going on with the testing in the bay?’.  I twice wrote to Mike Kelland (CEO of Planetary Technologies) to point out the stress this imposed on our community and asking him to tell us straight if they had decided to leave and were just waiting to slide away quietly.  

And now ‘to be distributed from Mike’s inbox’ had given me the answer.  They were cutting all ties. They planned to tell South West Water the next day and all the other ‘stakeholders’ on Wednesday 16th April in a weeks time.  Until then the news was embargoed. 

I realised that I was probably the only person in the UK, who was privy to this news. I’d found out before their partner, South West Water, and all their other local and UK contacts.  Me, coordinator of Keep Our Seas Chemical Free, the group that had done everything in our power to publicise what Planetary were doing and to hold them to account.

By this point, adrenaline was surging through my body.  What was I meant to do with this information? The letter to South West Water and the 31 other letters to MP’s, councillors, NGO’s, a lord . . . and of course the letter to me. Old news by the time I scrolled down to it.  

I did what any sensible person would do – put the kettle on for a cuppa.  

In the kitchen, I told my daughter and she immediately compared it to SignalGate in the US.  It was the fact that Planetary had invited me in – the very last person to whom they’d want to leak this information.  We’d always been civil but I’m not naive enough to think that Planetary didn’t find me deeply difficult.  I’m sure some choice swear words had been thrown in my direction which is perfectly understandable given the circumstances.  And now, I was the only person in Cornwall who knew what was about to happen. 

By this point I was pacing around the table with my cup of tea.  I felt the strong instinct that we needed to get this information out before Planetary Technologies.  Why should they get to carefully curate this news to suit their own PR strategy? But was publishing a private email ethical?  I’m not a journalist but is this a case where public interest overrides privacy?  

I knew I needed to run it by Sue Sayer of the Seal Research Trust – my sister in arms throughout all of this.  We always bounced ideas off each other and tended to come up with a good strategy between us.  If she thought it was the right thing to do – I’d do it.  Sue was stuck in an endless meeting and my brain was racing.  I’d downloaded the messages, copied them, partly anonymised them.  Made a list of journalists.  I’m normally pretty good at not hassling people but I sent Sue a stream of messages. Her meeting overran by half an hour by which point I was hyper anxious.  If we were going to do this, we had less than a day.  Maybe no time at all if Planetary realised their mistake.  One of my overdramatic messages to Sue said ‘OMG this is killing me’.

And when we spoke, she immediately agreed it was right to share the news by fulling anonymising and publishing the SWW letter on Facebook. 

And so I posted it with an explanation that Planetary Technologies were leaving Cornwall…and they weren’t planning to tell us till the following week: 

Two years ago it looked like  Planetary Technologies were in St.Ives Bay for good and would by this point be pouring vast amounts of Magnesium Hydroxide into the bay – using Cornwall to scale up and then launch their technology around the world.   And now suddenly the threat to our bay had evaporated.

I started getting in touch with our press contacts – and they were interested.  They’d been covering this from the first revelation from The Times in Feb 2023 and it was a big story.  Meanwhile, Sue with her forensic science mind noticed that the EA weren’t even on Planetary’s list of letters.  This seemed  fitting since Planetary had failed to tell the EA about their first (and now only) test in September 2022.  It was when the EA by chance discovered Planetary’s equipment at the St. Erth water treatment centre that they started trying to apply some oversight.  

Remarkable that two years down the line, it was Sue who advised SWW that Planetary were pulling out of their partnership.  And Sue who told the Environment Agency (who had eventually invested considerable sums of public money investigating Planetary), that they had left without a goodbye.

Meanwhile, news outlets needed to fact check with Planetary and were asking me when they could do it.  I didn’t want to blow our time advantage but Sue’s emails to SWW and The EA sealed the deal.  Now surely everyone knew.  The social media post was getting a lot of traction and the Planetary google doc was still live.  Sue reminded me that Canada was four hours behind us . . . so Planetary Technologies were going to be waking up to another PR disaster.  The Times published the news of the email leak and the end of the experiment and local news channels, radio and newspapers covered the story.  

The Planetary google doc stopped working. 

And the letter meant to be sent ‘from Mike’s inbox’ on the 16th March arrived in my email inbox later that day on Wednesday April 9th. 

Old news.  I’d seen it already.

Written by Senara Wilson, April 2025

Photo – Warbey