RE: How China will rule the next industrial revolution16 May 2019 17:41
Typhoon - no problem.
China is also seeking to expand its dominant market position in vanadium and graphite, securing additional supplies and building integrated supply chains. Vanadium is a transition metal that is used in flow batteries, superconducting magnets, and high-strength alloys for jet engines and high-speed aircraft. Chinese firms already produce 56 per cent of the world’s vanadium domestically, and China is home to 48 per cent of the world’s reserves. Now, they are targeting South Africa, ranked third in vanadium production and reserves behind China and Russia.
In 2015, Hong Kong-based International Resources , a company whose ownership is opaque, executed a takeover of a big vanadium mine from Russia’s Evraz Highveld Steel and Vanadium, which was facing bankruptcy. In 2016, China’s Yellow Dragon Holdings co-invested with Bushveld Minerals, the primary vanadium developer in South Africa’s massive Bushveld Complex, to acquire Strategic Minerals, which owned the Vametco vanadium mine and plant. Yellow Dragon subsequently increased its investment in Bushveld Minerals and has become the fifth-largest shareholder.
The holdings deepen China’s influence over South Africa’s vanadium resources and its role in the country’s emerging high-tech sector. Bushveld Minerals is moving to develop an integrated platform to produce vanadium redox flow batteries for distributed energy across South Africa. The vanadium resources will also flow toward China, feeding its battery industry and the National Development and Reform Commission’s planned rollout of 100-megawatt stationary energy storage stations to manage its wind and solar energy.
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