The vanadium and oil shale pilot plant is scheduled to be operational for six months, and has been designed and developed to validate QEM's extraction process, ahead of a commercial demonstration plant for the project, 16km east of Julia Creek.

The vanadium resource is "one of the largest in the world" and while QEM's primary focus is extracting vanadium and oil shale, it will also integrate metallurgy work to investigate high purity alumina extraction potential, after a recent resource estimate identified a material volume of aluminium.

High purity aluminium oxide has been recently designated as a critical mineral.

QEM managing director Gavin Loyden said the commissioning of the pilot plant was positive progression of the Julia Creek project and showed its potential as well.

"We are now well positioned to unlock value for our shareholders as we commence our prefeasibility studies," Mr Loyden said.

"Crucially, the potential high purity alumina upside recently identified will be incorporated into our original bench scale test work program schedule cost-effectively and without timing delays to the core of our program."

The pilot plant has been built by Indian firm AMAR in India and was commissioned at Melbourne-based HRL Technology.

The Julia Creek Project covers a total of 250 sq km in the Julia Creek area.

In March QEM announced a significant Resource Upgrade, which resulted in a 64pc increase in size of the Julia Creek Vanadium JORC Resource, since the previous upgrade in 2019.

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