Bushveld Minerals has entered into a conditional agreement to buy the remaining shares of the Vametco vanadium operation.

 Integrated primary vanadium producer Bushveld Minerals has entered into an agreement to acquire the remaining 26% interest in the Vametco mine and processing facility located in Brits, South Africa. Currently, Bushveld Minerals holds a 74% interest in the operation and will acquire the remaining stake from a black empowerment (BEE) consortium. In exchange, the consortium will receive 232.84M shares in Bushveld, representing 13% of its enlarged share capital. The transaction is subject to approval by the South African Reserve Bank.

Bushveld Minerals operates two subsidiaries: Bushveld Vanadium, which mines and processes vanadium ore; and Bushveld Energy, an energy storage solutions provider. It is one of only three operating primary vanadium producers, owning two of the world’s four operating primary vanadium processing facilities. Vanadium mining and refining operations are located in the North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo provinces of South Africa. Current vanadium mining operations consist of the Vametco mine, the Brits Vanadium project (mine) and the Mokopane Vanadium Project (mine). Bushveld also owns two refinery plants: Vanchem (producing vanadium pentoxide, ferrovanadium and vanadium chemicals) and Vametco plants (producing vanadium carbon nitride products, Nitrovan).

Vanadium demand this year has been negatively impacted by China’s below-par economic performance, with rebar production down y-o-y relating to a weak construction sector. As a result, prices of vanadium pentoxide have tumbled over 32% since the beginning of the year, averaging at US$6/lb V₂O₅ in September. However, vanadium’s use in battery energy storage systems (BESS) in the form of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB) has proven to be more resilient to prevailing macroeconomic headwinds. Additional VRFB deployments in China and the rest of the world this year proves that there is an appetite for widespread adoption of this BESS technology. Project Blue’s base case sees VRFBs maintain a 1% share of the BESS market to the end of the decade, translating into approximately 20kt V demand.