Given we haven't seen an uptick in vanadium price due to vrfb, and the world has been sluggish to catch up with China in implementing them, it's definitely not a home run betting on vanadium right now, i'll give woody that.
And not having vision into the future, we have to assume worst case, we might be looking for finance in a similar market to what we have now, which again is no home run, and if the chances of vanadium taking off was a home run, we wouldn't be close to 1.6c right now..
So in worst case circumstances, a few factors will be key I think.
-If there was to be investment into vandium, it would be the pick of the crop only. Very proven recovery methods eliminating risk on production side, best financial metrics, solid management. Anything less then the project would be a non starter.
-Low OPEX. AVL need to get this as low as possible. A big capex is one thing and many companies have got over big capex hurdles. If we can get to an attractive opex figure (and I mean in comparison to other potential vanadium projects), we have a shot. If not, a very tough sell this will be.
-How serious are western governments about establishing a critical metal resource that is not based in China/Russia or political risk countries? They talk serious, but if they don't back it fully and it's all talk, again this will be tough while we're in a bad vanadium market.
The risk is pretty large, but that is reflected in our share price, so from here, it's a betting man's game, and we'll just have to see how things unfold.
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