Neometals Completes Busy Week
THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Neometals (ASX: NMT) was busy this week, announcement wise, this week announcing a battery recycling Memorandum of Understanding and vanadium recoveries at a mini-pilot plant.
Neometals, by way of Primobius GmbH, the joint venture company owned 50:50 by Neometals and SMS group GmbH, executed a non-binding MoU with InoBat j.s.a., a founder and the controlling person of a Slovakian battery manufacturing company, InoBat Auto j.s.a.
The MoU provides an evaluation framework towards a potential Primobius-InoBat commercial cooperation that will operate a commercial lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Central/Eastern Europe.
“Reaching preliminary development terms with a battery producer so quickly after Primobius’ establishment reflects the status of our project and the industrial scalability of our recycling solution,” Neometals managing director Chris Reed said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“Europe leads the world in electric vehicle value chain investments and we are seeing first-hand how industry is positioning to ensure that brands can deliver the lowest carbon footprint products and support resource efficiency and circular economy principles.
“Primobius is very well placed to capitalise on the push for domestically sourced supply chains and this deal with InoBatis a material endorsement of the Primobius business plan.
“The relevance of the MoU should also be considered in the context of the consortium of conglomerate partners that sit behind InoBat(inc. CEZ, MOL and IPM Group)”
Neometals followed up this announcement with news of the completion of a mini-pilot test work campaign on the company’s Vanadium Recovery Project (VRP).
Results confirmed excellent vanadium chemical product purity (greater than 99.5 per cent V2O5), strong recoveries (>75%) and reduced residence time for Neometals’ patent pending hydrometallurgical process for recovering vanadium from Slag.
Earlier this year, Neometals executed a collaboration agreement with Critical Metals Ltd, to jointly evaluate the feasibility of constructing a facility to recover and process high-grade vanadium products from vanadium-bearing steel by-product (Slag) in Scandinavia.
Critical, in turn, has executed a conditional Slag Supply Agreement with SSAB EMEA AB and SSAB Europe Oy, subsidiaries of SSAB, a steel producer that operates steel mills in Scandinavia.
Slag is a by-product of SSAB’s steel making operations.
Neometals explained the Slag Supply Agreement provides a secure basis for the evaluation of a potential Slag Recovery Facility capable of processing 200,000 tonnes of Slag per annum without the need to build a mine and concentrator like existing primary producers.
“We are very pleased with the results of the Mini-Pilot campaign,” Chris Reed said.
“This substantially de-risks our patent-pending processing flowsheet and gives us the confidence to commence the PFS.
“We now shift our attention to the design phase of the larger proposed pilot plant which will leach material from three of SSAB’s steel operations in a mild carbonate solution at moderate temperatures and atmospheric pressure.
“The beauty of our process is that the main reagent is carbon dioxide, which we plan to capture from third-party emission to sequester some 65,000 tonnes in our leach Residue rendering it inert and available for secondary use.”
TO READ THE FULL MoU ANNOUNCEMENT: CLICK HERE
TO READ THE FULL MINI-PILOT ANNOUNCEMENT: CLICK HERE
Email: info@neometals.com.au
Web: www.neometals.com.au