Photo by: Largo Resources
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Despite the price of vanadium having fallen below the historic floor of $5/lb, market entrant Largo Resources on Friday reported that it was making progress at ramping-up its Maracas Menchen mine, in Brazil, saying it believed that current pricing was unsustainable in the long run.
Vanadium pricing had decreased significantly since January last year, when it was trading at about $6/lb and it currently remained at a five-year low trading at $4.85/lb to $5.15/lb on the bid offer, according to market analyst Metal Bulletin.
Since January, 2005, vanadium had traded below $5/lb on both the bid and offer for only 72 days and for 158 days where the bid price was below $5/lb.
Based on historical trends, Largo believed that current vanadium pricing was unsustainable for a long period.
The company reported that, to date, the Maracas Menchen mine had shipped about 1 140 t, or 2.5-million pounds, of vanadium – an increase of about 408 shipped tonnes since early last month.
The company currently had about 60 t of recent production in inventory and commercial shipments had been continuing weekly.
So far this month, the Maracas Mine recorded production output at between 55% and 75% of capacity.
"We continue to see steady growth in the ramp-up of the Maracas mine. We are achieving greater stability in the operations and expect to see continued momentum in our production growth to reach our Phase 1 target production by the third quarter,” Largo president and CEO Mark Brennan said.