Date: Nov 19, 2018
Chris Reed’s Neometals has dusted off long-stalled plans for its Barrambie titanium-vanadium project 80km north-west of Sandstone on the back of surging prices for the metals.
The company announced late last week it would revisit and update a 2009 definitive feasibility study on the project in light of the new market fundamentals.
The refocus on Barrambie comes as the company looks to spin out the asset into a new company, separate from its lithium business, which is focused on a 13.8 per cent stake in the cash-generating Mt Marion lithium operation near Kalgoorlie and plans for a lithium hydroxide plant outside the Goldfields town.
Vanadium pentoxide is trading at a 13-year high of $US33.90/lb after new safety standards were introduced in China, which mandate a higher proportion of the steel-strengthening commodity in the production of rebar (steel used in construction).
The lightweight, high-strength metal is also increasingly used in the aviation industry and has a growing application in vanadium flow batteries that store renewable energy.
Supply has simultaneously been crimped by an environmental crackdown in China banning high-polluting swing producers in the country as well as the importation of vanadium slag, which requires emission-causing extraction methods.
