Earlier this month, AMG announced that its board had approved plans to build a vanadium electrolyte plant in Nuremberg, Germany.

AMG is a global critical materials company and through AMG vanadium, is a key producer of vanadium.  Its Cambridge (Ohio, USA) plant produces vanadium and molybdenum products from spent refinery catalysts and other secondary raw materials and has an estimated production capacity of 2,700tpy V. 

In 2022, the company opened a second facility in Ohio (Zanesville) with a 34,000tpy spent catalyst processing capability, enabling AMG to essentially double its spent catalyst recycling capacity and annual ferrovanadium production.  Zanesville is ramping up successfully.

The Zanesville expansion signalled AMG’s expectation that vanadium demand in HSLA steel was set to increase and that IMO 2020 regulations (which limit sulphur in bunker fuel oil) would result in more vanadium-bearing spent catalysts available to process. 

Now the company is set to make another vanadium market expansion, having committed to building a vanadium electrolyte plant in Nuremberg, Germany.  The plant will have a target capacity of 6,000 m³ vanadium electrolyte.  Basic engineering for the plant was completed in November 2022, with production expected to start at the end of 2023.

The plant is likely to supply AMG LIVA, AMG’s new “…growth platform for industrial battery installations worldwide”.  AMG LIVA has launched a hybrid energy storage system combining lithium-ion and vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) technology, and in December 2022 sold its first commercial industrial battery Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) to Wipotec in Germany.  LIVA’s technology was developed by Phyr7, which was acquired by AMG in 2021 and subsequently renamed.

If Zanesville signalled AMG’s faith in future vanadium demand in steel, the Nuremberg plant and Phyr7 acquisition show its belief in the future of VRFB demand, and its commitment to build an integrated supply chain in this space.   

Project Blue has recently revised its outlook for VRFBs and remains positive about the likelihood of the technology’s widespread commercialisation.  By 2050, the VRFB market accounts for ~30% of total vanadium demand in our base case.  This new demand will require electrolyte from new projects, most of them unknown at this stage.