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There is a reason why, despite being invented in the ‘70s, there has been no commercial application of this technology despite it being made from cheap materials. The claim of potentially greater energy density than lithium or VRFB looks unlikely to me.
There are big backers but they are talking about these batteries being at least 4 years away, that’s 10 years in real life. I don’t think they are a challenge to proven technology of VRFB and lithium at the moment. It is a different story to having something working on a small scale in a lab to a grid scale application that needs to last 20-25 years.
An example is the recent South African tenders for battery storage required 10 YEARS of proven commercial application before you could even apply. Large scale utilities are not going to risk power blackouts on unproven technology.
https://twitter.com/bigbitenow/status/1417757000339951616?s=21
https://www.bbnbigbitenow.com/post/bushveld-minerals-q2-update-review
Production increases are imperative to Bushveld having enough V to supply their electrolyte production facility, this being where the big money is.
Every kilo of V made into electrolyte is worth roughly double what it is when sold to the steel industry. I’m really hoping that once sustained production increases are proven Fortune will allow Bushveld Energy to enter into off take agreements for its electrolyte and increase the size of the electrolyte plant. I’m not entirely sure of the lead times to increase the 200 mwh electrolyte production facility to 800 mwh although all permits for such an increase are already in place.
Although production increases to sell to the steel industry are important and extra revenue welcome, electrolyte is where the big money is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57883332
There was a previous lithium battery fire another facility in 2019 that burned the place to the ground.
These issues have been going on for years, the local community cannot even decide who is in charge and where the royalties that have been have gone. I am pretty sure this is going nowhere. Read this article, page 17, royalties have been paid, this is more about the management of the fund.
https://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Mining-royalties-research-report-final1.pdf
Cindercone, you forget that BMN have justify why they have borrowed a load of cash from Orion. They are developing a plant that would have gone bust were it not for Bushveld, Evraz didn’t have the foresight to do it.
Developing a mining site is not rocket science, to be honest, it’s far more difficult.
Carpfisher, I have already researched this and ‘IF’ there was a sudden change that BMN was only going to be traded on JSE, which I seriously doubt, there are several UK brokers that trade JSE stocks in an ISA.
Google is a wonderful tool.
I was thinking about the jam today, rather than jam in 2025, comment that was made earlier in relation to FAR. Firstly I think that 2025 for production for FAR from a new plant when the current feasibility study will not be ready until sometime in H1 2022 is unlikely.
Once the study is completed, funding needs to be completed and plant built and commissioned. FAR bang on about ease of extraction but nothing in mining is guaranteed. One only has to look at the issues at the cursed Windimurra vanadium project in Australia that has had $700,000,000 spent on it and it is predicted that it will still require at least $150,000,000 to get it fully functional with reliable grades.
Interesting Windimurra was originally owned by Xstrata when Sir Mick Davies was CEO. It makes me thankful for how far Bushveld have got and hopefully able to progress over the next couple of years. Jam should be spread very thickly here in the next year or two.