JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – To promote the role of vanadium in the growing global energy storage market through its application in vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFB), Aim-listed Bushveld Minerals has established an energy storage solutions company, Bushveld Energy.

The new entity, headed by Mikhail Nikomarov, would aim to install several VRFB systems during this year, while building awareness of the VRFB proposition and, in the medium term, establishing local assembly and manufacturing capacity, creating a captive market opportunity for Bushveld-produced vanadium in the form of electrolyte.

Bushveld held a significant high-grade vanadium resource base through its Mokopane vanadium project, which hosted 300-million tons of high-grade, low-cost primary vanadium magnetite resource, as well as an unquantified resource at its Brits Vanadium subsidiary. 

Bushveld Minerals CEO Fortune Mojapelo commented in a statement on Monday that the global energy market was ripe for utility-scale energy storage solutions, adding that VRFBs were well placed to take significant share in this market.

“Smart partnerships in a large market opportunity mean we do not have to develop all the competencies and capacity required across the entire value chain.

“In addition to broadening the capital sourcing opportunities for the group beyond the resource-biased capital pools Bushveld Minerals has relied on, Bushveld Energy presents arguably the deepest vertical integration to resonate with the beneficiation and local content manufacturing aspirations of the local government,” he said.

Further, Mojapelo believed the establishment of the new entity offered a capital-light pathway to cash flows alongside the mining and brownfield processing platforms the company was developing.

LEMUR RESOURCES UPDATE
Bushveld further reported that following the acquisition of coal developer Lemur Resources in August 2015, it was now working towards integrating the ASX-listed company into the Bushveld Group, while further developing the Lemur coal asset in Madagascar and pursuing an independent power producer licence.

Bushveld would also absorb Lemur drilling and geoservices subsidiary Pan African, integrate Lemur's Zaaiplaats tailings project into Greenhills Resources to attain early cash flows and further develop the latter’s tin projects.