RC drilling at Surefire Resources' Victory Bore deposit in WA’s Mid West region has returned a flock of broad vanadium intercepts with widths of up to 92m at 0.41 per cent vanadium pentoxide.
The company says the probe has led to the discovery of three parallel mineralised lodes which it believes could bolster its already massive 151 million tonnes mineral resource once additional drilling and modelling is complete.
The better intersections from the three lodes include an up to 56m interval in what the company has coined its Main Lode. The hit delivered a grade of up to 0.45 per cent vanadium
Notable results from the second, dubbed the Central Lode include an up to 38m parcel of vanadium pentoxide mineralisation with a grade of up to 0.42 per cent.
The best result from the third, known as the West Lode was an up to 60m strike which delivered a grade of up to 0.23 per cent vanadium.
A banded iron formation, or “BIF” lode that sits roughly 100 metres from the West Lode was also picked up during Surefire’s interpretation of magnetic data.However, the potentially iron bearing lode has not yet been tested.
Despite another breakthrough at a project that has proved highly fruitful in terms of exploration Surefire believes the asset still offers plenty of head room for more discovery. Notably, the company has only drilled 1.4 kilometres of an 8-kilometer-long BIF magnetic anomaly at intervals of 100 metres by 25 metres.
Surefire Resources Managing Director Vladimir Nikolaenko said:“Vanadium has been identified by the Australian Government as a Critical Mineral required to make advanced technologies that will support the global push for decarbonisation. The drilling results from Victory Bore display huge true widths, exceptional continuity both along strike and down dip, which are ideal for bulk mining. Based on these results, Victory Bore is shaping up to be a world class vanadium deposit “
Victory Bore already houses an inferred mineral resource of 151 million tonnes at 0.44 per cent vanadium pentoxide, 25 per cent iron and 6.73 per cent titanium dioxide. In combination with the company’s smaller Unaly Hill resource to the south-west, the two projects make up its larger Victory Bore-Unaly Hill vanadium project.
Together, the deposits hold one of the largest vanadium pentoxide resources in WA and with an inferred mineral resource of 237 million tonnes grading 0.43 per cent vanadium pentoxide, 24.9 per cent iron and 5.9 per cent titanium dioxide represent an enormous 2.263 billion pounds of contained vanadium pentoxide.
Vanadium has a storied history in the production of steel alloys, nuclear reactors and aircraft carriers but the metal’s recent application in the development of vanadium redox flow batteries has fired it to the forefront of the renewable energy space. The outlook has also led to the commodity being classified as a critical mineral by the Australian government.
The devices are also used to store energy generated by solar and wind-sourced systems and are ideal solutions for grid-scale power storage.
Recent evaluations by Allied Market Research indicate the global market for redox flow batteries could grow at a stunning compound annual growth rate of roughly 15.2 per cent to US$403 million by 2026 – up from 2018 figures of US$130 million.
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By Matt Birney
