Western Australia-born gold explorer Horizon Minerals has successfully spun out its Queensland rare earth interests into the newly minted Richmond Vanadium Technology which on Tuesday began trading on the ASX.
Richmond Vanadium has been fast developing what is already considered a world-class vanadium resource sitting in the heart of north Queensland which tips the scales at 1.8 billion tonnes with an ore reserve of 459Mt at 0.49 per cent for 2.25Mt vanadium pentoxide.
Those numbers, Richmond says, are enough to sustain a 25-year mining operation to extract vanadium which is seen as having an advantage in long-life, large-scale battery storage compared to lithium counterparts.
Richmond Vanadium Technology Managing Director, Dr Shaun Ren said: “With the expected emergence of vanadium as one of the most important critical minerals that will enable the global energy transition, this is the ideal time to provide investors with an opportunity to invest in a world class clean green focussed vanadium project.”
“We are excited about the potential this advanced project has to offer shareholders and the role it can play in the expansion of the global vanadium sector.”
The initial public offer for Richmond Vanadium was made via the issuance of 62.5 million shares at 40c a pop – including to eligible Horizon shareholders - raising $25 million.
Following its successful debut on the ASX, the company is now focused on getting a bankable feasibility study on the table within the next 15 months that it expects will demonstrate a robust economic case for the development of a vanadium-producing mine in Queensland.
Highlighting the growing interest in developing a domestic vanadium industry, the Queensland government has stepped up to the plate with a $10 million minimum contribution toward building a common-user vanadium processing plant to kickstart a battery storage industry on the back of small miners.
In promoting its support for vanadium developers, the government highlighted the critical role this specialty metal plays in creating batteries that can store large amounts of energy for extended periods of time.
Guidehouse Insights predicts demand for vanadium batteries will grow 800 per cent to US$7.76 billion by 2031, led by China’s ambitious carbon neutrality goals.
Vanadium batteries have been found to handle more charge cycles, are easily expandable at little extra cost, are safer and have a lower decay rate than lithium-ion batteries, making them ideal for large scale storage applications such as utilities.
Dr Ren was clear about the value of batteries in the renewable energy sector.
“You have renewable wind and solar power available in the day but that is not the time when demand for electricity peaks – you need to store that electricity in batteries. “
“That enables the industrial scale power grid to go renewable and vanadium is playing an important role in that.”
Investors are now seeing the prospect of developing vanadium reserves outside of geopolitical hotspots of China or Russia and Australia is shaping up as the frontrunner in the field.
Interest in downstream processing is also growing.
North Harbour Clean Energy in November enlisted Austria’s CellCube to build a vanadium redox flow battery plant on Australia’s east coast.
Australian Vanadium subsidiary VSUN Energy, which counts CellCube batteries among its products, is also collaborating with US Vanadium to build electrolyte production capability in Australia.
All this combined points to an industry which appears ready to break free from the playpen.
The potential size of Richmond Vanadium Technology’s resource and government support for downstream processing could put the new player on the right footing to be near the front of the pack.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
