Japanese firm Idemitsu has raised its stake in Australian vanadium miner Vecco to gear up its rare metal business, aiming to start mining at the Debella project in 2024.
Idemitsu announced on 24 March that it invested an additional A$8.3mn ($5.5mn) in Brisbane-based Vecco and now holds a total stake of 14.7pc, including its initial investment in October 2022, with Idemitsu investing a total of A$13.16mn. The new capital is to promote Vecco's Debella vanadium project in Queensland, which includes producing and refining vanadium along with manufacturing vanadium electrolyte for vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB).
The Debella project aims to produce 5,500t of vanadium oxide and 2,000t of high-purity alumina, with a life of mine that is over 50 years, according to Vecco's website.
Mining operations will only start in 2024, with the project's mining lease application already underway, according to Vecco. But the project aims to first build a vanadium electrolyte production site with a 35 MWh/yr capacity in 2023. The firms expect to increase the capacity to at least 350 MWh/yr in the future, but did not disclose the timeline. VRFB is an ideal battery for power systems as it is easy to expand capacity using the material and it has a long lifespan, Idemitsu said.
"The project primarily aims to build a value chain of local production and local consumption of vanadium in Australia, so exporting [the material and/or the product] to Japan is not under consideration although we have a desire to do so", an Idemitsu representative told Argus. "For now, we focus on taking advantage of our coal mining experience for promoting rare metal mining business as they have some similarities," the representative added.
