Name and Location
Bushveld vanadium project, Limpopo, South Africa.

Client
Bushveld Minerals.

Project Description
The project has a large, Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant 52-million-tonne vanadium mineral resource on the main magnetite layer (MML). The MML orebody is about 10 m thick, shallow-dipping and tabular, with more than 5.5 km of strike, which makes it ideal for opencast mining. Conventional drilling, blasting, loading and hauling operations are envisaged.

A scoping study completed on the Bushveld vanadium project envisages a base case production scenario of one-million tonnes a year of run-of-mine, producing 10 370 t/y of vanadium pentoxide flakes using salt-roast processing.

The salt-roast process flowsheet was chosen on account of its significantly lower capital expenditure and better overall economics, as well as its relatively short path to production, while retaining options for further processing of the iron–rich calcine to produce pig iron at a later stage.

Net Present Value/Internal Rate of Return
The project has an estimated pretax net present value of $561.9-million and an estimated pretax internal rate of return of 35.6%. Payback is estimated at four years and four months from the start of mining.

Value
The scoping study has estimated capital expenditure at $261.5-million.

Duration
Not stated.

Latest Developments
Additional Davis tube tests (DTT) on two samples from hanging wall units to the MML of Bushveld Minerals’ vanadium project have confirmed the company’s expectations that suitable vanadium grades and recoveries can be achieved from the hanging wall layers of the MML.

The aim was to define the value associated with the hanging wall layers of the MML, which are currently considered waste, in the recently published scoping study for the Bushveld vanadium project.

This testing, which has delivered vanadium recoveries higher than 90%, is the first step towards having additional layers declared as mineral resources.

“We will continue with our financial evaluation of these layers. A positive outcome of the financial evaluation will allow us to define up to 156-million tons more resource, in addition to the 69-million tons Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant resource already defined in the hanging wall of the MML,” says CEO Fortune Mojapelo.

Key Contracts and Suppliers
Process Engineering Solutions Company, Hatch Goba, Hindsight Financial & Commercial Solutions (scoping study); SGS South Africa (extractive metallurgical testwork); and MSA Group (resource estimations).

On Budget and on Time?
Too early to state.

Contact Details for Project Information
Bushveld Minerals, tel +27 11 268 6555, fax +27 11 268 5170 or email info@bushveldminerals.com.
Hatch Goba, tel +27 11 239 5300 or fax +27 11 239 5790.
SGS South Africa, tel +27 11 681 2500 or fax +27 11 433 3654.
MSA Group, tel +27 11 880 4209, fax +27 11 880 2184 or email info@msagroupservices.com.