Name of the Project
Barrambie vanadium/titanium/magnetite project.

Location
Western Australia.

Project Owner/s
Neometals.

Project Description
A revised definitive feasibility study (DFS) has confirmed primary production of vanadium pentoxide and ferrovanadium from vanadium-rich Central B at the Barrambie project to be technically feasible and economically viable. The DFS is an update on the 2009 DFS, which considered primary vanadium production from the conventional salt roast-leach process.

The revised DFS has estimated that the project could produce about 6 337 t/y of ferrovanadium over a 15-year mine life, based on a mineral resource of 280.1-million tonnes and an ore reserve of 39.9-million tonnes. This compares with the 2009 DFS, which estimated production of 7 700 t/y of ferrovanadium over a mine life of 12 years.

Mining the Barrambie deposit will be completed using conventional excavator-and-truck methods, supported by ancillary fleet, with all works provided by a professional mining contractor, including a mobile plant, maintenance and drill-and-blast.

It should be noted that the revised DFS does not consider the impact on project economics of exploiting the contained titanium through a processing solution for the whole of deposit.

Potential Job Creation
Not stated.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has a pretax net present value, at a 10% discount rate, of A$430-million and an internal rate of return of 21%, with a pretax payback of 5.1 years.

Capital Expenditure
Initial capital costs, including a 14.3% contingency, are estimated at A$692-million.

The 2009 DFS estimated a capital cost of A$628.9-million.

Planned Start/End Date
Not stated.

Latest Developments
The next step for the project is to determine how best to extract value from titanium, which represents about 95% of the contained Barrambie resource metal.

The company has started pilot-scale evaluation of conventional hydrometallurgical flowsheets to recover titanium and vanadium from the titanium-rich Eastern Band. The pilot work will provide data to upgrade the accuracy of a 2015 prefeasibility study to DFS standards and determine the optimal flowsheet to process the ‘whole of deposit’, before starting front-end engineering and design studies.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
Snowden (mine planning criteria, optimisation, mine design and scheduling, study reporting and Joint Ore Reserves Committee reserve reporting) and Adaman Resources (mine infrastructure, contractor pricing and cost modelling).

On Budget and on Time?
Not stated.

Contact Details for Project Information
Neometals, tel +61 8 9322 1182 or email info@neometals.com.au.