Neometals scores more European funding for Finnish vanadium project

Neometals has scored another tranche of funding to advance its vanadium recovery operation in Finland. EIT RawMaterials will throw in an additional €494,00 (A$818,000) in grant funding, following an earlier €500,000m (A$827,000) investment only late last year.  

EIT RawMaterials is a networking organisation co-funded by the European Union that supports Europe’s transition to a green, circular and digital economy. It helps companies overcome innovation challenges, access funding opportunities and upskill and train talent. The group is mandated by the European Commission to lead and manage the European Raw Materials Alliance.

The special purpose vehicle, Recycling Industries Scandinavia AB (RISAB), was established by the two joint venture partners, Critical Metals and Neometals, to build and operate a plant to recover vanadium from steel production’s side stream and process it into high-purity vanadium - a main component of green steel.

In the new agreement, EIT RawMaterials will increase its minority shareholding in RISAB to 2.2 per cent, at a pre-money valuation of €50M (A$82.8M). There is potential for a bag of investment cash totalling up to €10M over the next 18 months.

The strategic agreement provides additional funding and services to Novana, the commercialisation arm of Neometals’ patent-pending vanadium recovery (VRP) process, for the development of the process in Finland.

Novana holds the exclusive licence to Neometals VRP Technology in the Nordic area and a non-exclusive licence for areas outside the Nordics. It is required to pay a 2.5pc gross revenue royalty to Neometals from all the products and sales generated from its use. 

Neometals says the funding will advance technical work programs in parallel with a project financing process now underway for the development of a plant to produce high-purity vanadium pentoxide from vanadium-bearing steel slag in Pori, Finland.

Neometals’ 100pc-owned, VRP technology enables sustainable production of critical and strategic battery materials without mining risk. Stockpiles of vanadium-bearing steelmaking by-product, slag, are converted into supply-constrained battery metal with zero waste and a zero embedded carbon dioxide footprint.

Neometals managing director Christopher Reed said: “We welcome the continued support of EIT RawMaterials through this second tranche of funds to maintain the ongoing technical work programs in parallel with the project financing process. We hope to capitalise on the significant support from the Finnish State and EU to deliver Europe’s first domestic producer of high-purity vanadium, a critical material for the production of high-strength steel, aerospace titanium alloys and stationary energy storage batteries.”

Vanadium has traditionally been used as a hardening ingredient in steelmaking but is increasingly catching the eye of the battery industry, where it is touted as having a lucrative future in grid-scale power storage. The metal’s benefits over lithium-ion in such uses include favourable costs at scale, safety, longevity and consistency of power delivery over longer periods.

Given the current geopolitical environment and a push to reduce reliance on China, the continued demand for recycled vanadium for green steel and batteries seems assured. 

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