I have been involved in the Vanadium game since 2012 in Australia .
Gildemeister (GM) and a company called American Vanadium Corp (AMC) signed a deal for the supply of Vanadium from them to supply GM vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) for their VRB's produced in Germany/Austria. The mutually beneficial deal was signed in February 2013.
Basically, GM got the Vanadium from AMC for guaranteed supply of V2O5 and then reciprocally AMC got the marketing rights to sell the GM cube Cells in the US.
AMC's deposit was called the Gibellini project. The price of V2O5 98% purity flake in those days was around $14K/tonne on a good day and fluctuating.
The Gibellini project in Nevada floundered for whatever reason, so we fast forward to May 2018 when John Lee's Canadian Prophecy Development Corp buys out AMC: http://www.prophecydev.com/prophecy-to-acquire-advanced-gibellini-vanadium-project-in-nevada/ Check out the grades and then tell me what you think about Protean's locked in 50% deal with the South Koreans with a marketing kicker .. remember the SK's are using the latest tech .. not a 2013 VRB version ( which no doubt has also been improved by GM since)
You can see Prophecy Developments John Lee's enthusiasm for buying the project in the following link:
My involvement in with Vanadium in Australia was a project in Julia Creek in North West Queensland, where we had millions of tonnes (not tons) of contained Vanadium in the Toolebuc Oil shales. We sold out of the project due to the crash in the oil price around 2013 but still held a small portion and the best of the 30,000 sq km Vanadiferous Oil shales at Julia Creek .. 0.5% V2O5 .. but that's another story.
Check out what's now happening in that are today .. these are not hard rock Vanadium deposits .. however beneficiation was a problem ..that seems to have been overcome these days.
The next and easier Vanadium deposits go hand in hand with Uranium in soft rock (unlike the Ferro titanium Vanadium plays) which tend to have higher grades but have their own issues getting the Vanadium out the magnetite. Certain Uranium deposits contain high grade Vandium, it only works where you have a jurisdiction conducive to Uranium mining .. SK is one of those.
We have Vanadium in Uranium in some of our QLD tenements, but, there is a moratorium on Uranium mining in that state at the moment.
That said, the Toolebuc formation was well known to contain highly anomalous Uranium amongst a multi element mix in the average 15 metre toolebuc formation in the Carpentaria basin .. Esso, Elf Aquitaine, BHP ,CRA and other majors drilled hundreds of square kilometres of it between the late 1960's to the 1990's searching primarily for the Uranium (looking for Redox roll zones) whilst uncovering a massive Vanadium and Oil shale resources in the process.
So, bottom line, what has caught my interest in POW .. simple .. it's called vertical integration and a finished end product that is seemingly highly marketable, once all the compliance tests have been finished .. after all, you need to comply with regulations and certification in Australia and other western markets.
I don't see that as a major problem ... if they need more vanadium from Australia to supply the SK battery manufacturer, that can be arranged. There is a lot more to this than meets the eye from my perspective.
Hope that helps, from an explorers perspective, If their VRB box works, we may even be a customer for field work activities up the track.Cheers
HR
Always DYOR before you invest, I have done mine and it's my money to lose. I always put our business first, but, where merit warrants a small investment in another Junior player, then it will happen .
POW Price at posting:
3.4¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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