Date: Nov 20, 2018
Integrated vanadium company Australian Vanadium (ASX: AVL) and its subsidiary VSun Energy have partnered with the Future Batteries Industry Cooperative Centre (FBI CRC) to advance Australia’s battery metals sector.
Australian Vanadium and VSun Energy have signed an agreement to offer “in-kind services” to the FBI CRC.
The WA state government, along with Curtin University, the University of WA, Murdoch University, Tianqi Lithium, BHP Billiton and Pilbara Minerals are assisting the FBI CRC in creating and building Australia’s battery industry.
Via the collaboration, the trio plan to leverage each other’s expertise to extract and process vanadium and produce vanadium electrolyte for the country’s growing vanadium battery sector.
“It’s great to see the change in focus in WA to not repeat the dig and ship mentality of the iron ore boom,” Australian Vanadium managing director Vincent Algar said.
“We have the opportunity to add real value and develop strong expertise in Australia and, in particular, Western Australia,” Mr Algar added.
Lithium valley
Regional Development Australia (RDA) published a report in May this year that revealed Australia could lose a “once in a life-time” opportunity to secure a substantial slice of the emerging battery revolution which is predicted to be worth around $2 trillion by 2025.
The battery chain is currently estimated at $213 billion and due to a lack of downstream processing, WA only captures about $1 billion of that pie.
