Dear Critical Metals Shareholders, VRP Partners & Friends,
I’m pleased to provide a short update on the Vanadium Recovery Project (VRP) planned for Pori, Finland.
Community Days held in Pori, Finland
Representatives of Critical Metals and Neometals (our partner) met with the Pori community members and potential financial partners in Pori on 23 and 24 March 2022. The two-day event was a great success with parties becoming better informed about working together for the benefit of all stakeholders. Two significant events took place during the community days: the project site was secured when a lease was signed with the Port of Pori; and our main by-product was committed to Finnish company Betolar via the signing of a Letter of Intent. Two short videos on the project and the community days are available here, and the Betolar press release is available here. I would like to extend a massive thank you to my Team, the Neometals Team, Business Finland, City of Pori and Port of Pori for the really exciting few days in Pori and a superb event!
Studies
Neometals are now finalising the feasibility study (FS) and results will be announced close to 30 June 2022. The FS is based on processing 300,000 tonnes of steel slag per annum to produce approximately 9,000 tonnes of vanadium pentoxide per annum, corresponding to approximately 4% of the world´s vanadium supply. Importantly, this is an increase from the 200,000 tonnes of throughput presented in the preliminary feasibility study (PFS).
Permitting
A decision on the VRP environmental permit is anticipated in September 2022. The VRP process does not discharge water into the nature as it’s a closed system, it has low energy requirements compared to traditional projects, it consumes large amounts of CO2 and minerally sequesters the carbon into our by-product and converts industrial by-products into high value products for energy storage. With these attributes the project is well received by a majority of stakeholders.
Offtake
With substantial test work now completed we’re confident that the vanadium products we plan to produce will be some of the highest-grade vanadium pentoxide available anywhere in the world. Western Europe has no primary sources of vanadium, and Russia supplies approximately 13% of the world’s vanadium. Security of supply of vanadium (a critical raw material) is now a major concern for Western Europe. Furthermore, with embargoes on trading with Russia the price of vanadium has started to rise. We have now started engaging with potential customers and the interest in our future product is strong.
Funding
Our plan is to appoint a well-regarded Finnish investment bank to assist with organising project finance once the FS the results are known. Our goal remains making a final investment decision by 31 December 2022. In terms of listing, the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has encouraged us to lodge our application once the feasibility study is completed and off-take secured. Meanwhile, several investment firms and trading companies in Europe are expressing interest in funding the VRP.
It is my personal view that the European Union wants projects like the VRP to be successfully commissioned because securing critical raw materials (like vanadium) is one of the EU's major goals.
We’ll keep you informed.
Best regards,
Damian
Damian Hicks
Executive Director
Critical Metals Ltd
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