VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Canadian firm Sparton Resources has bought a group of currently inactive vanadium-redox flow battery (VRB) manufacturers for $3.3-million, the company announced Tuesday.

The Toronto-headquartered company said that its subsidiary VanSpar Mining (VMI) had on August 8 signed a share purchase agreement dated May 18 to acquire all of the shares of JD Holding (JDH), a Cayman Islands corporation.

JDH is the parent company for a group of currently inactive companies engaged in the manufacturing of VRB systems, Sparton advised.

Further, VMI and Sparton's 100%-owned subsidiary, Sparton International Holdings (SIH), also signed a share acquisition and subscription agreement on August 8 with a private investment corporation for the financing of the JDH acquisition, which will result in the private investment corporation owning about 82% of VMI.

The transactions are subject to regulatory, stock exchange, shareholder and board approvals, and the completion of due diligence by the private investment corporation in the case of the financing agreement, as well as other conditions common in transactions of this nature.

Sparton advised that these opportunities arose out of its initial activities in pursuing minerals exploration and mining opportunities globally. The company said it would continue to focus on exploration and mining development objectives in the long term.

According to Sparton, JDH has five subsidiaries which, until the end of 2014, have been actively engaged in energy storage technology development, with its main project being the design, manufacture and installation of VRB systems in China, the US and other countries. However, in 2015, JDH's subsidiaries became insolvent and, in China, were placed under court protection from creditors.

That court-supervised status continues in relation only to unpaid factory rents from October 2015 to the present. All other China-based liabilities were discharged by JDH by April, with revenue generated from the State Grid battery commissioning contract.

DEMAND GROWTH
Sparton advised that large-scale energy storage was essential for enabling governments to achieve their targets for increased renewable-energy use and a reduction in carbon emissions. There is currently 4.8 GWh of installed capacity, and demand for energy storage has grown at a compound average growth rate of 38% since 2011. VRBs are expected to be a large component of new projects.

The success of the 8 MWh VRB installation at the Zhangbei project, in China, has resulted in widespread recognition of the industry's reliance on JDH technologies and has generated new opportunities globally, Sparton stated. JDH subsidiaries have, to date, installed batteries in 12 different countries and accumulated more than 800 000 hours of testing and quality assurance development. It has, and will continue to, add to a large portfolio of intellectual property registrations.