Australian Vanadium (AVL) and Neometals signed a non-binding term sheet to explore opportunities for AVL to process coproduct vanadium concentrate from Neometals’ 100% owned Barrambie project.

Neometals’ Barrambie is a vanadium/titanium/magnetite project located approximately 80km northwest of Sandstone in Western Australia. A revised DFS was published in 2019 envisaging an open-pit mine with an initial 15-year mine life and plants for the production of vanadium pentoxide and ferrovanadium.

In 2022, a PFS into titanium and iron-vanadium concentrate production from Barrambie was released, suggesting that Barrambie could potentially supply more than 500ktpy of high-quality ilmenite during the first ten years of operations. Under the term sheet signed by Neometals and AVL, this co-product would be supplied to AVL for vanadium extraction.

AVL’s Australian Vanadium project consists of a high-grade V-Ti-Fe deposit in the Murchison Province approximately 43km south of Meekatharra in Western Australia and a concentrate processing plant will be located near the port city of Geraldton.  Under the term sheet signed by Neometals and AVL, both parties will work together to investigate opportunities for Neometals’ Australian Titanium subsidiary to construct a low-temperature roast plant near AVL’s processing plant site and to co-locate or share non-process infrastructure.

The collaboration can be seen as a positive step for two parties looking to enter vanadium production over the 2020s.  The sharing of processing infrastructure could help kick start vanadium production in the country – which hasn’t been a producer since a fire shut Windimurra in 2014.