Surefire Resources has sealed a pivotal memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), where it will now process ore from its Victory Bore vanadium and high-purity alumina project in Western Australia’s Mid West region.
The company will export its high-grade ore through the port of Geraldton for the cost-effective downstream processing that will feed a growing steel and battery manufacturing market.
As part of Surefire’s MOU with the Ministry of Investment Saudi Arabia (MISA), vanadium magnetite ore mined at the Victory Bore open pit near Sandstone in WA’s goldfields will be concentrated at site using low-cost beneficiation before being trucked about 450km west to the port of Geraldton.
The ore will then be shipped to the KSA’s Port Damam, which is also known as King Abdul Aziz Port, where downstream processing of the concentrate will occur in nearby industrial sectors to produce the high-value end products, vanadium pentoxide, vanadium electrolyte, ferro-vanadium and pig-iron, in addition to the critical battery components, vanadium electrolyte and high-purity alumina (HPA).
Surefire says the MOU provides it with a clear pathway to maximise value from Victory Bore by processing in an overseas jurisdiction where power costs are low, infrastructure for downstream processing is present, and a significant local market exists for products.
Management says the KSA will also provide it with other vanadium opportunities including fly-ash and hard rock vanadium resources, while facilitating the company’s preferred engineering partners to design and construct processing facilities.
Surefire Resources managing director Paul Burton said: “This is a very significant milestone and achievement for the Company and provides a clear development pathway for the Victory Bore Project as we progress the Pre-Feasibility Study. The KSA is a rapidly developing region with demand and incentives for critical mineral resources. We welcome the engagement with MISA and look forward to working closely with them to achieve our mutually beneficial development plans”.
The steel industry in KSA currently accounts for about 90 per cent of the kingdom’s total vanadium demand, where the silvery-grey metal is used as an additive to reduce the end product alloy’s sensitivity to overheating and increases its strength and toughness, making it an ideal structural steel.
The KSA’s steel manufacturing sector is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.9 per cent for the next five years, as the market is driven by the ever-expanding building and construction sector – which is now the third largest non-oil contributor to the Saudi economy. The sector’s boom is being fuelled by rising government investments, improved standards of living and the increasing disposable income that is generating high structural steel demand.
Although traditionally reliant upon oil and the manufacturing sector,
recent green schemes in the region, such as the “Saudi green initiative” and the bigger “Middle East green initiative” have seen battery manufacturing take more of a central role as carbon emission targets loom.
The KSA is aiming to use the Saudi green initiative to reduce carbon emissions by more than 278 million tonnes per year by 2030 and to be at zero emissions by 2060. Surefire says that mission represents a significant demand opportunity for its vanadium feedstock to be processed into vanadium electrolyte for use in the redox flow battery manufacturing space.
Late last month, Surefire revealed it had produced the vital HPA standard known as “4N” – referring to the four nines in the 99.99 per cent purity measurement obtained at the end of processing a feedstock ore of about 24 per cent aluminium oxide.
HPA is a highly-specialised product with less than 100 parts per million total impurities. It has a small market, but commands a high price and is currently trading in the vicinity of $30,000 to $45,000 a tonne.
It has unique properties such as a high melting point, elevated mechanical strength and hardness, good thermal conductivity and high insulation, in addition to being chemically stable.
The high-purity product plays a critical role in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, which rely on 4N HPA for the essential ceramic coatings on the separators that are placed within the battery between the cathodes and anodes. HPA provides excellent thermal insulation that greatly improves safety, charging efficiency, high-power output capability and battery life, while reducing self-discharge.
The HPA market is also now modelled to rise, with Mordor Intelligence predicting a CAGR of about 22 per cent. Global demand for HPA last year was estimated at about 80,000 tonnes, but with some estimates of CAGRs being much higher, 200,000 tonnes of the product may be required annually by the end of the decade.
To add some perspective, each electric vehicle battery requires between five and 30kg of 4N HPA.
To feed the huge HPA demand, Surefire says Victory Bore can contribute an estimated total aluminium resource of 37.7 million tonnes at 23.3 per cent aluminium oxide, 17 million tonnes of which is in the measured and indicated categories at a concentration of 23.1 per cent.
The total vanadium resource at the project is estimated at 321 million tonnes at 0.39 per cent vanadium oxide, with an upside of between 1003 and 1511 million tonnes at between 0.2 and 0.43 per cent vanadium oxide, if exploration targets are included.
Surefire says it will include its newly-penned KSA development strategy in its prefeasibility study (PFS) for the Victory Bore project. The PFS is expected to be completed by November.
The market has clearly resonated this morning with Surefire’s MOU revelation, with the company’s share price jumping nearly 38 per cent in early intraday trading to touch 2c after closing yesterday at 1.45c.
But let’s face it, it’s not every day a company partners up with a kingdom.
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By Andrew Duffy
