The relationship that vanadium development company Vanadium Resources (VR8) is striking up with China Energy International Group could give the Steelpoortdrift project developer an answer to many of the downstream opportunities it would be considering.

This would be particularly so within the ambit of electrolyte production and potential vanadium flow battery involvement.

"Something that's different for vanadium, that's not so with other resource companies, is that with vanadium, you have the possibility of owning the resource even after you have effectively dispossessed yourself of it, in the form of electrolyte being in a battery that you rent out, get back again, and can then resell, which is unusual for mining companies," VR8 founder and chairperson Jurie Wessels highlighted in a Zoom interview with Mining Weekly. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video.)

China Energy, which already has abundant vanadium, is looking to tie up with a resource that, at this stage, is the largest in the world, and probably the highest grade, and then looking at the future and tying that in with what is unfolding within the vanadium flow battery space and mass energy storage.

"That's the thematic, I think, that might unfold here, which is quite exciting," added Wessels.

Amid this potential far-reaching business horizon, China Energy and VR8 have signed a memorandum of understanding for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services, which with financial assistance becomes an EPCF, for the Steelpoortdrift vanadium project that the Australia-listed VR8 is planning to establish in South Africa's Limpopo province.

Interestingly, the engineering division of China Energy, which a major corporation probably 20 or 30 times bigger than Eskom, has developed numerous projects worldwide, not only in power, but also in mining, and this division will be doing the EPCF for VR8 should negotiations culminate in an agreement.

Already involved in the Northern Cape's upcoming 283 MW Mooiplaats solar power plant, China Energy brings with it a strong balance sheet to attract the right kind of funding.

Moreover, vanadium offtake as well as vanadium flow battery deployment at the Mooiplaats solar plant could be synergies that follow.

Another possibility is production of vanadium electrolyte for sale into China or elsewhere for use in vanadium flow batteries.

"There's quite a lot that could happen with the relationship that's unfolding," an upbeat Wessels commented, in estimating the capital cost of the vanadium project VR8 is developing at "about $300-million".

The Steelpoortdrift project, where a concentrator plant and salt roast leach plant are planned, is located not far from mature operations such as Mapochs and Vantech's Kennedy's Vale in the eastern Bushveld Complex.

To be mined will be three layers of the upper zone of the Bushveld Complex, where the magnetites reside.

Unlike past producers, VR8 be mining the so-called massive pure magnetite part of the orebody. The concentrator plant, through which the material will pass, will have a three-stage crushing circuit to remove the gangue to avoid having a messy product entering the milling circuit.

Once milled, water-based magnetic separation and filtration will provide a concentrate containing about 2.1% of vanadium pentoxide, which would then go into a salt roast leach plant.

There, sodium sulphates would be mixed with the concentrate ahead of being heated in a kiln and thereafter leached with water.

Desilication would then offer the option of further processing through two production circuits, an A circuit and a B circuit - one a batch circuit, and the other continuous, with the focus on two different products, the batch circuit producing a vanadium oxide V205 powder, which carries a premium for being particularly suited to vanadium flow batteries, and the other V205.

"Those are the end products that we would be producing, but we could also just stop at the A and B productionand sell that, if that...