With growing demand from the steel sector and a steady increase in energy storage applications, vanadium has quickly become AIM-listed Bushveld Minerals Limited key project development focus and priority, CEO and founder FORTUNE MOJAPELO tells CHANTELLE KOTZE.
Bushveld Minerals, one of only two vanadium producers in South Africa, is in a unique position – it has a large, high grade primary vanadium deposit portfolio with a combined 440 Mt resource (including 55 Mt combined reserve) with Tier-1 vanadium grades of ~2% V2 O5 (vanadium pentoxide) in magnetite, which has helped position the company as an emerging large-scale
primary vanadium producer.
Bushveld Minerals has its eyes firmly set on its vision of building the largest, lowest cost and most vertically integrated primary vanadium platform in the world (based on resource size and vanadium production). This is an opportunity for Bushveld Minerals to carve its name as a pre-eminent vanadium primary vanadium producer at a time of constrained supply and limited
new supply prospects – a situation that is expected to lead to a sustained structural market deficit, with significant price upside.
Located in South Africa’s Bushveld Complex, host to some of the world’s largest high grade primary vanadium resources, Bushveld Minerals has three key projects, including the newly acquired Vametco vanadium mine and its existing Brits and Mokopane vanadium projects.
“Bushveld Minerals currently produces about 3.5% of total global vanadium,” says Mojapelo. “Our ambition is to grow this number to more than 5% by 2019 in the near term and more significantly in the longer term through a combination of growth of the company’s current vanadium platform both vertically and horizontally,” he adds.
