Under the agreement, AVL will process vanadium concentrate from Neometals’ Barrambie project and share non-process infrastructure at its Tenindewa processing plant site
AVL, Neometals enter critical minerals collaboration. (Credit: Bishnu Sarangi from Pixabay)
Battery materials producer Neometals, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Australian Titanium (ATI), has signed a non-binding term sheet with Australian Vanadium (AVL).
As per the term sheet, AVL will process vanadium concentrate from Neometals’ Barrambie project and share non-process infrastructure at its Tenindewa processing plant site.
The term sheet is valid for nine months and can be extended in six-month increments with mutual agreement, while AVL, Neometals, and ATI will look to sign binding agreements.
In addition, it allows the parties to explore opportunities for ATI to build an LTR plant near AVL’s processing plant site and to share non-process infrastructure.
Australian Vanadium managing director Vincent Algar said: “The Australian Vanadium Project and Barrambie Project are the most well-understood and advanced vanadium titanium deposits in Australia.
“This collaboration will provide synergies, allowing the two projects to move forward even more confidently, using a mutual understanding of the ores and processing.
“The Vanadium Triangle in the Midwest contains many remnants of the once massive Murchison Layered Intrusive Complex, a Bushveld Complex sized intrusion which hosts a number of potentially economic vanadium titanium magnetite (VTM) deposits.”
Neometals has recently announced the results of a pre-feasibility study (PFS) at the Barrambie project, which considers the production of an ilmenite concentrate and an iron/vanadium concentrate co-product.
The concentrate co-product will be supplied to AVL for vanadium extraction processing.
Barrambie titanium and vanadium project is located in the Murchison Province, around 43km south of the Meekatharra mining town in Western Australia.
The Australian Vanadium project contains high-grade hard rock titanium, vanadium and iron resource subsets.
It will have an open-cut mining, crushing, milling and beneficiation plant to the south of Meekatharra and a concentrate processing plant near the port city of Geraldton.
The project will produce a vanadium concentrate and high-purity vanadium for the steel, titanium master-alloy, along with iron titanium (FeTi) co-product.
Neometals managing director Chris Reed said: “We welcome the opportunity with AVL to investigate co-location, infrastructure sharing and the potential to supply high-grade vanadium co-product from our proposed mineral separation plant.
“Barrambie is one of the highest-grade titanium deposits in the world and can produce both a chloride-grade ilmenite product and vanadium-iron co-product from low-temperature roasting and magnetic separation of Barrambie gravity concentrates.”