Australian Vanadium Limited (ASX: AVL) has signed a one year extension to its land purchase option agreement with the land owner of the location for its strategically located Vanadium processing plant near Geraldton in Western Australia.
In October 2019, AVL announced that it had signed an option agreement for land to locate the processing plant for the Australian Vanadium Project near to the port city of Geraldton. A subsequent one year extension was signed in October 2020.
“AVL is progressing towards production of Vanadium products from the Australian Vanadium Project in Western Australia,” Managing Director, Vincent Algar, said.
“Securing the option over the site is a key part of our development activity. Water supply, land rezoning, transport routes and final approvals over the site and roads are important steps on the pathway to bring the Project into production.”
The Project mine site which will supply the processing plant with vanadium concentrate, is located approximately 40km south of the mining town of Meekatharra in Western Australia.
To ensure a low-cost operation AVL will undertake crushing, milling and beneficiation of vanadium bearing magnetite ore at the mine site location and transport the resulting concentrate to the proposed processing plant outside of Geraldton, where final refinement to high-quality, high-value vanadium products will take place.
A unique value proposition resulting from this arrangement is that the company is able to sell the iron titanium coproduct (FeTi coproduct) generated after extraction of high purity vanadium products. The potential for sale of the bulk FeTi coproduct is one of the globally unique opportunities provided by the near coastal location of the plant and its proximity to the Geraldton port.
The first Letter of Intent for the FeTi coproduct has been signed with Shenglong Metallurgy International Pte Limited, the commercial arm of a 12 million tonne per annum (Mtpa) steel producer located in southern China’s Fangchenggang port.
The physical and infrastructure benefits of the processing plant’s location include:
- Access to cheaper natural gas.
- The opportunity for power at the mine site to have a large component of renewable energy, including a vanadium redox flow battery.
- Significantly reduced mine site water requirements by as much as one third of total Project’s water requirements.
- A smaller mine site camp due to reduced numbers of personnel required at the mine site and the ability for processing plant employees to live locally.
- Reduced construction costs for the processing plant and lower transportation costs of reagents.
The extension agreement provides a further one year extension of the original option agreement signed on October 21, 2019.
