Ann: Major Study on High-Grade Vanadium Cu-Pb-Zn-Ag Development, page-4

Met testing well underway, so more news flow to come from that.

Metallurgical Testwork:

Previous gravity concentration testwork on high-grade underground resource material by Avonlea Minerals Ltd in 2012 produced high concentrate grades of 21% V2O5, 14% Zn and 53% Pb9. Further, Phase 1, gravity testwork for Golden Deeps by Mintek - South Africa, utilised historical low-grade surface stockpiles and tailings material grading 0.30% V2O5, 1.29% Pb and 1.14% Zn to generate an overall concentrate grade of up to 8.9 % V2O5, 30.5% Pb, 8.95% Zn, which represents a 30x upgrade of Vanadium10.

The Company commenced down-stream hydrometallurgical leach testwork on the Abenab concentrate with Core Resources (“Core”) in Brisbane in mid-20211. The objective of this work is to generate an economic flowsheet to process vanadium-lead-zinc (+/- copper, silver) gravity concentrate from the Abenab deposit and produce down-stream high-value products such as vanadium electrolyte for vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) as well as allow further processing to produce Vanadium Pentoxide (V2O5).

Phase 1 of this testwork produced high-vanadium extractions of up to 95.4%1 into solution and demonstrated that direct ion-exchange can separate the vanadium from lead and zinc to produce downstream high-value vanadium products, with lead, zinc and potentially copper as by-products.

Following the success of the Phase 1 testwork (which was based on the low-grade surface material) it was decided to produce a new batch of concentrate from the much higher grade Abenab underground Mineral Resource material and subject it to similar testwork.

A new bulk sample of existing drillcore representative of the Abenab Mineral Resource (including ABRCD011) was recently provided to Nagrom Laboratories in Perth, Western Australia for a second phase of gravity concentrate metallurgical testwork1. This three-stage program is in progress and consists of:

1. i) Grinding sighter tests using various grind sizes, followed by water-based gravity separation.

2. ii) Gravity separation optimisation using spirals with water table cleaning, and,

3. iii) Final concentrate production of 3 to 5kg of high-grade concentrate.

The bulk sample provided to Nagrom was 157kg and assayed 0.9% V2O5, 2.1% Pb and 0.7% Zn, which is close to the targeted resource grade at the cut-off derived from the initial Abenab Mining Study2.

The results of grinding sighter tests have determined that a grind size of 0.5mm is optimum. Nagrom has completed a bulk grind prior to gravity spiral concentration testing that has now commenced.

Following several stages of gravity spiral concentration, final concentrate grades, mass and recovery information will be generated. This will target a 10 to 15 times upgrade (to between 10% and 15% V2O5) and 3 to 5kg of material for further downstream hydrometallurgical testwork.

A quote has been received from Core Metallurgy for a second phase of downstream hydrometallurgical testwork to be carried out on the Abenab gravity concentrate sample produced by Nagrom.

Key operating and capital cost information will be derived from this gravity testwork for input to the Study.