Vanadium Pentoxide (V2O5)
View attachment 1189548
Not sure what caused the price spike in 2005, however the 2008 spike was caused by the ~7.8 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan (China).
"Concern raised by vanadium market participants over Chinese supply after the earthquake in Sichuan, China. The earthquake's epicentre was Chengdu, which is described as "Vanadium City." - Metal Bulletin Daily, 2008
So why the rise in Vanadium now? Is it another pump and will it dump again?
Very unlikely because of two new trends happening globally:
1) China
2) Battery demand
China is the biggest miner and consumer of V2O5 globally by a
long shot.
New laws have been implemented where vanadium slag imports has been banned on Jan 1st 2018.
All reinforcing bars used in construction must contain double the existing amount of Vanadium and that comes into effect in Nov 2018, this is expected to increase V2O5 consumption by 30%!
Vanadium is also a significantly better when it comes to large scale batteries for the booming (renewable) energy market.
You'd be right in saying Lithium outperforms Vanadium when it comes to battery powered cars, but Vanadium is superior in
every way when it comes to large scale batteries. I won't bore you with the specifics, if you're interested look up "Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs)" - They are non-flammable and very efficient at storing large scale electricity on high-demand scenarios.
What has SRN got, then?
Thankfully, we already have a good idea..
View attachment 1189578
A JORC will be due soon to confirm what's in the ground.
What about our peers?
AVL - $80M Market Cap
180Mt V2O5 @ 0.75%
TNG - $110M Market Cap
160Mt (118Mt measured, 20Mt indicated, 22Mt Inferred) V2O5 @ 0.28%, 5.3% TiO2 & 23% Fe
+ some minor 20% interest in another project
NMT -$165M Market Cap
280Mt V2O5 @ 0.44%, 9.1% TiO2
+2 projects (one is a 13% holding, another is a 100% holding lithium based tenement no drilling yet that I know of)
TMT - $33M Market Cap
119Mt V205 @ 0.8%
I have a pretty good idea what the Market Cap should be for SRN when JORC confirms the grades. And it's definitely not $8m.
(20min delay)