The Germans missed out on the Australian submarines contract to the French. But it looks as if they are about to get deeply involved in the $970 million Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory, owned by ASX-listed TNG.
TNG went into a trading halt yesterday pending an announcement involving the German engineering and construction giant SMS, previously flagged as a group likely to become involved in the building of the refinery for Mount Peake product at Darwin.
When TNG comes back from a trading halt it wouldn’t be surprising if it had put out a smallish placement to SMS to cement their new relationship. But more to the point is SMS’s history of being a regular user of Germany’s Export Credit Agency scheme, meaning it could help provide part of the financing that needs to be secured before Mount Peake becomes a reality.
Like all export credit agencies, the base motivation is to secure outgoing exports — read jobs — for a country’s domestic industry by leveraging off the national balance sheet to help secure financing for Mount Peake-type projects.
The world is not exactly short the titanium or iron that Mount Peake would produce.
But it is a different story with vanadium, an increasingly strategic metal thanks to vanadium redox batteries that are seen as an answer to large-scale power storage, such as being attached to power plants or electrical grids
TNG Price at posting:
14.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
