An industry breakfast heard how one company wants to put North West Queensland on the map when it comes to mining the new economy resource of vanadium.
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Executive director of Multicom Nathan Cammerman spoke to the MineX 2021 industry breakfast at the Buffs last Thursday to give an update on its Saint Elmo project in the North West
Mr Cammerman said Multicom was an unlisted Australian company which was currently obtaining a mining lease to develop its 100pc-owned Saint Elmo, about 25km east of Julia Creek.
He said the project which was nearing completion of its definitive feasibility study would be a low cost producer of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) with a high potential for by-products.
Vanadium is a grey, soft and ductile mineral with unique properties that make it valuable to steel, chemical and energy storage industries.
Vanadium has been designated as a critical mineral, due to its use in alloyed steel, needed for defence and aerospace applications.
Vanadium redox flow batteries is a growing use as a safe solution for large-scale energy storage.
Vanadium is mined mostly in South Africa, China, and Russia and in 2020 the Australian government established a Critical Minerals Facilitation Office to provide policy and advice and to connect Australian projects with investors, regulators and exporters.
Mr Cammerman said Saint Elmo has been granted major project status (federal), and a project of regional significance (Queensland) and could produce up to 3000 tonnes a year of V2O5 and they were in discussions with offtake and investor partners.
He said they hoped to produce a maiden reserve statement by end June, get environmental authority granted by end August and a mining lease the following month.
Project finance is expected to finalise by August 2022.
He also said Multicom had subsidiary called Freedom Energy which was partnering with American firm StorEn Technologies to advance StorEn's vanadium redox flow batteries with a prototype installed at QUT's battery testing facility.
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
