Bryah Resources’ transformation of critical nickel, copper and cobalt metals from the waste stream at a new vanadium mine in WA’s Mid West is looking more and more like an extremely cunning plan.
New detailed studies have now begun between Bryah (ASX:BYH) and Australian Vanadium (ASX:AVL) for the critical component of the Gabanintha project, part of a near $50 million Federal Government Modern Manufacturing Initiative grant awarded to AVL to progress the new mine.
Bryah plans to maximise the value and use of the metals produced at Gabanintha by concentrating nickel, copper and cobalt, key metals for the EV battery industry, from the waste tailings stream as a sulphide concentrate.
Sulphide concentrates are the key raw material source for nickel sulphate, the chemical used in high range NCM battery cathodes.
With current nickel, copper and cobalt prices not far off all-time highs and major supply shortages looming, extracting that resource is more critical than ever.
A quarter century of battery metals
It all sets the stage of a metallurgical and scoping level study, just days after AVL completed a bankable feasibility study – a wrap of project economics with key details and the degree of confidence banks need to provide debt funding.
Last week’s study outlined a mine with a 25 year life, built off an updated ore reserve of 30.9Mt at 1.09% vanadium pentoxide including proven reserves of 10.5Mt at 1.11% V2O5.
With a larger reserve comes a bigger inventory too of the mine’s nickel, copper and cobalt by-products.
“With AVL’s BFS now completed, Bryah can utilise the updated BFS Resource and Reserve and mine schedule to work with AVL on progressing the recovery of the additional, highly sought after battery metals, Cu, Ni and Co from the tails produced by vanadium concentrate production,” Bryah chief executive officer Ashley Jones said.
“AVL has done a tremendous job with a very detailed BFS and receiving support from the Australian Government through the $49M MMI grant.
“The BFS engineering design of the onsite magnetic separation process has an area allocated for a base metals’ recovery circuit, which will now be the focus of the Bryah team. As AVL progresses towards vanadium production, Bryah’s base metals project takes another step forward.”
The MMI grant also includes funding for the use of green hydrogen in the Australian Vanadium Project process in collaboration with ATCO.
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