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RazorShultz very much appreciate you taking the time for answering.

However in a way you have made my point. Many institutions don't invest in AIM companies ... period. That has nothing to do with the investment climate in SA which is what Lindon was trying to make out. Lindon in my opinion is misleading investors into thinking that SAs performance is preventing investment in BMN because of the rules. The reality has nothing to do with that. It is because BMN are on AIM that many institutions can't or won't invest, and that would still be true even if SAs economy was booming. Correct?

Lindon I have some questions for you that arise from your post at 08.32 this morning:

"Yes, quite true Hammill23... the problem of the deteriorating investment outlook is that fund rules prohibits the majority of institutions from investing in BMN shares even if they want to... and that rather noticeable lack of buying power despite the all the recent good news...could well be what is contributing to our low sp!"

I must explain that I am no expert in this field but i assume you have the answers, given your suggestion that Institutions can't invest in BMN and that is contributing to a low share price. This is a very bold and original assertion and a therefore I assume that you have not just made it up!

First, as Moody's still have Investment Rating for South Africa, albeit negative, it is NOT junk status. Therefore why are 'the majority of institutions' (your words, not the article's) unable to invest? Please explain. To me that sounds misleading.

Second. BMN are listed on the London AIM market, not South Africa, and registered in Guernsey, not South Africa. Please explain to me even if SA was given Junk Status how that would affect investment in a London listed company.

I don't want uninformed opinion and guesswork, I can do that myself. I need you to explain the reality of these two situations from what is a professional or well researched perspective. You have suggested that the company in which I have invested a large part of my savings is currently in a position where it's share price is low because the majority of institutions are not allowed to invest in it. I am challenging you to prove that point or withdraw your comment and apologise for potentially misleading the market.

I will put aside the fact that you attacked me earlier for challenging your negativity, as this is a much more serious issue if you have indeed mislead the market.

Lindon the Moody's rating has already been discussed on this bb. In my opinion you are not reporting new news, merely posting negativity at a very suspicious time if the week.

I will leave it to others to judge your motive, but it does seem like odd behaviour from a 'genuine' shareholder when so much good news is emerging. I guess some can't see the wood for the trees.

I would like to point out that the interview refers to business relationships in Europe and U.S. That clearly extend the company's links beyond SA so therefore very relevant as a counterpoint to your negative posts.

Part 4
Of course we have also committed ourselves to further growing production at Vametco beyond that level to 4200 mtV on the back of some capital expenditure to increase the capacity of the plant. Something which we will obviously update the market as we do more work in respect of this. But I couldn't be more happy with the progress that we have seen at Vametco. We have a very motivated staff employee base which is all working all in one direction with us to ensure that Vametco unlocks it's true potential. We should never forget and I think lose sight of the importance of this asset and obviously with Vanchem coming onboard it will also play an important role. Just underscoring the significant strides we've made in terms of for example getting alignment with our workforce when we negotiated our wage agreement this year for the next we were able to agree that very quickly, just in 3 sittings, and that's something that bodes well going forward with the belief that we are very well positioned to continue driving improvements in the operations of Vametco. We want to be the lowest cost producer of vanadium and an important part of that is driving more throughput through the plant and extracting as much efficiencies as we can do."

"Well Fortune thank you very much. It's great to speak to you and Mikhail today and look forward to speaking to you again soon."

FM "Thank you. Thank you for your time."
MN "thank you very much."

Part 3
"So Mikhail the RedT / Avalon investment is part of a broader initiative into the VIP. Can you give us an update here?"

MN "Absolutely. I think one of the things that we can also do as Bushvleld is to help mobilise additional funding to go into investment to go into these companies. We have done very well but we are not somebody that can carry the entire industry. However we think that we know the industry quite well. We obviously have the best line of sight in terms of how the issues of vanadium supply can be solved to enable the industry to be successful as demand rises. By making commitments ourselves we feel that can actually unlock quite a bit of additional investment. What we want to do with the platform is to make sure that we are not the only investor that comes in to a strong and growing VRFB company. So in a way we can kind of mobilise and multiply our investment to bring in external funding and that's really what the VIP is all about."

"Now Fortune you have made significant strides at Vametco from an operational perspective as well as with stakeholder engagement. Tell us more."

FM "Absolutely. I should just say that as I have indicated Vametco is at the core of what we do. It is until the acquisition of Vanchem the sole and core source of our revenues and our cash flows. It provided us the platform to expand our business into the energy storage market which we are very excited about. What that means is that it is absolutely important that Vametco operates and performs to its potential. Since the acquisition of Vametco we have been fairly clear that we saw significant opportunities to do 2 things. 1 is to increase production throughput significantly and secondly to also just improve the operational efficiencies of the plant. We have been engaged with a transformation programme there which is looking to address those 2 key elements. We are very happy with the results of that work which has seen the company improve its performance across all key metrics. One particular notable one being the fact that we produced in September 310 mtV, which is the highest the plant has produced from just magnetite concentrate. That is a great result. We expect to see that continue and we have always been clear that we are focussed to get Vametco producing up to 3400 mtV pa run rate just on the back of operational improvements, efficiency improvements. We are well on our way to achieving that.

Part 2
"Thank you Fortune. Now Mikhail turning to you it would be great to get an update on Bushveld Energy. Tell us more about your strategy as well going forward."

MN "Our strategy is really focussed on 3 directions. 1 is around vanadium electrolyte where we are building a facility to produce in SA and we have already deployed a rental product to allow customers to not buy the vanadium electrolyte as part of the value to actually rent that out to reduce the upfront costs. The second part is around manufacturing where we have set out a strategy of how we work together with the VRFB manufacturers though a platform that we've set up, a vanadium investment platform VIP, and very recently we announced our first investment under that which is linked to the proposed merger between two vanadium battery companies, Avalon Batteryout of North America and RedT which is listed in London. And then the third part is within Africa we look to deploy batteries within projects that require quite a bit of energy storage and we've done a system with the utility here. We are building a minigrid at one of our mines and we are actually building quite an extensive pipeline of in most cases renewable energy pairs with the long duration storage."

"And Mikhail you've recently announced your RedT / Avalon investment. Tell us about this and the significance for Bushveld."

MN "This is part of one of the ways that we engage with VRFB manufacturers. I think that these two companies are very complimentary in what they do. They have both been in the market for a few years. Avalon battery focussing more on the North American market and in China, with RedT more focussed on the European market and on project development and they are quite strong there. We really like the management team that Avalon brings. We like some of the expertise that RedT has developed. We don't we a lot of capitalisation between them and I think one major benefit is these are two companies that are still quite small. Together they are larger and one of the key challenges is to this technology is to get to scale. There's a very positive cycle that happens when you achieve economies of scale. Your costs come down. You get more projects as you are more competitive. You get more scale so it's a very nice positive cycle. We feel that 2 companies working together are going to get there much faster and at much less cost, and as an investor that's extremely appealing. That's why we support this transaction."

BRR Media FM MN interview 12.11.19

Part 1
"Welcome to BRR Media. Today I am joined by BMN following their operational update. Fortune and Mikhail it's great to have you with us."
FM "Thanks for having us it's good to be here."
"Thank you both and looking at Bushveld Vanadium first, Fortune update us on the company's activities over the quarter, particularly on the successful completion of the Vanchem Processing Facility. Now that you own 2 of the 4 operating primary processing facilities in the world how does this shape your strategy."
FM "Indeed. We have explained and outlined the strategy a couple of years ago already which is basically the script from which we operate, which is all about the vision to create a significant low cost and vertically integrated vanadium platform and in respect of which there's two key aspects to what we do, building our resource base and our production platform which is essentially centred around 3 deposits on the Bushveld Complex which combined for 550 million tonnes which is the largest primary vanadium resource base of any company in the world with tier 1 vanadium grades, combined with processing facilities that will allow us to supply vanadium and have a significant share of the global vanadium market. Those facilities essentially being the Vametco assets which we acquired from Evraz 2 years ago and which is currently the flagship and the core of our cash generation, and from which we have supplied just under 3% of the vanadium global market. We have since added Vanchem, which we completed yesterday, and Vanchem essentially brings an additional asset, a primary processing asset, and between Vanchem and Vametco post the refurbishment of Vanchemand some expansion initiatives at Vametco should see us grow our production to 8400 mtV pa over the next 5 years. That's a more than 3 fold increase in our production which would give us just under 10% of the global vanadium market. Our entire approach has been making sure that we've got a large resource base and we've got scaleable flexible and low cost production platform, which we are now in a position to do with both Vametco and Vanchem.

As you know we produced about just under 3% of the global market last year from Vametco. That really gives us a good platform to then develop the downstream energy business through Bushveld Energy whose sole focus is to promote the deployment of VRFBs in what is a multi billion dollar and growing stationary energy storage market."

I wonder if negative comments on a bb at opening on a Monday have a similar impact? Just a thought.

Vanadium prices UP ...... AGAIN !!!!

I remember it well. In fact I probably typed it out! Haha

Apologies: "You may not have been ...."

Exactly so Sharesaplenty.

You may nit gave been around this company long enough yet to have fully grasped just how good the leadership team is. I have been invested here for over 6 years. Within 2 months of my first purchase I met Fortune Mojapelo and was immediately impressed with him. I have been singing his praises ever since and he has not let me down. He seems to have the magic touch when it comes to strategy and then implementing a business plan. He is always several steps ahead of the market, as we are witnessing right now. I am beginning to believe that Mikhail may well be another strategic star.

I have always made it clear that I invested in the management of this company. I was delighted to read in the recent interviews that that is the exact same investment strategy employed by FM and MN through the VIP. My confidence in the future success of this company grows ever stronger. I see no reason to doubt that Bushveld Energy us going to be a (or possibly the) leading player in the growing VRFB market, and that may well deliver great returns for those investors with the foresight and patience to hold.

Just my opinion of course.

Alfa I have also carried out simple Patent searches for RedT and Avalon and found results for both companies. It would seem the BMN investment strategy is effectively already buying into intellectual property through the investments in all of the link ups recently announced in RNSs.

A rather cool strategy some might say.

Sharesaplenty does that fit their business model ? The recently set up Vanadium Investment Platform (VIP) is designed to allow BMN to invest in other companies but without directly involving themseleves in the management of those companies. They are trying to bring capital into this investment space, both their own and from other sources, thereby promoting partnerships etc in order that those enlarged companies, partners, etc benefit from economies of scale. I don't see anywhere that they wish to directly control the products, patents, research, etc. They seem to be trying to unify various strands of the VRFB industry without taking control.

The direction of research, product manufacture, patents, etc looks like it remains with the partner companies. BMN state that they are buying into the management and expertise of these companies. Love it or loathe it it is a clear strategy. And one thing we know about Fortune (and possibly Mikhail is that he is (or possibly they are) brilliant at strategy.

From the 11.11.19 interview. Quote from MN:

"We want to leave the operations to the management teams. I think that will also allow us if there are other good companies that we want to take a stake in knowing that we are not going to be involved in the operations, that the conflict of interests is not going to be there I think is very important to communicate. Strategically yes we can look and see where the market is going, we can offer some advice there because we have seen a lot, but we are definitely not going to get involved in the day to day operations."

I believe this extract from the FM / MN interview on 11.11.19 sheds light on exactly how BMN intend to maximise income from the stationary energy storage business. They do seem to have most bases covered!

"In some ways we aren't in direct control. Let's take an example of a project like our minigrid. There we are the developers so we get a development fee when that project .....? close. We are an investor co investors so we get the return in equity or dividends from the power purchase agreement that is signed to pay for the energy that minigrid produces. By the way we are supplying a battery into so if we want to we charge a mark up on somebody else's battery. If we are invested in that company we get an additional benefit because our investment has now appreciated in value because that company has now got more deployments.we are supplying electrolyte so we get a fee for manufacturing the electrolyte into that project. We mined the vanadium so now we've got a sale on the vanadium. This integration allows us really to capture the value sometimes 4 or 6 different activities on just one single project. Now I want to be honest we are not going to develop every single vanadium project every vanadium battery project in the world but if it's in Africa then it's extremely active. If it's somewhere in let's say Australia yes we are probably not involved in the development, but we may be supplying vanadium, electrolyte, possibly having equity stake into the company that invested there. Possibly having a stake into the rental product company that is supplying electrolyte for rental. So there's a lot of different ways and it can be extremely active. I don't know who is getting 6 ways to make money on one project. To some there might be only 2 or 3. But in either case it's more than just vanadium and that's what integration allows us to do."

I am by no means an expert on this but isn't the investment in Enerox through the VIP already an example of investment in VRFB research?

"Enerox is one of the world's largest researchers, developers, manufacturers and distributors of vanadium redox flow batteries ("VRFB"), headquartered in Wiener Neudorf, Austria. It has installed VRFBs at over 130 sites globally"

https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/BMN/potential-investment-in-enerox-gmbh-x9rhivg9uj9ev43.html

I do believe FM and MN way ahead of most in this game. Expect lots more to come from them.

Interesting trade logs (Europe) from this Wed and previous Fri. (Source: vanadiumprice.com) Compare the prices! And note we are told that prices continued to rise since Wednesday. (AsianMetals)

Wednesday November 13
Ferro-vanadium – $22.00-23.75 per kg
– 5 tonnes sold at $25.20 per kg in Europe
– Prices indicated at $21.60-23.60 per kg in Europe
– 6 tonnes sold at $23.60 per kg in Europe
– 5 tonnes sold at $23.50 per kg in Europe
– 25 tonnes sold at $22.50 per kg in Europe
– 15 tonnes sold at $22.50 per kg in Europe
– 4 tonnes sold at $23 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $23 per kg in Europe
– Prices indicated at $22-23 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $23 per kg in Europe
– 5 tonnes bought at $23.50 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $24 per kg in Europe
– 4 tonnes sold at $23.30 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $24 per kg in Europe
– Material reported sold at $23 per kg in Europe

Friday November 8
Ferro-vanadium – $20.60-21.60 per kg
– Prices indicated at $21 per kg in Europe
– Material sold at $20.60 per kg in Europe
– 25 tonnes sold at $20.80 per kg in Europe
– 5 tonnes sold at $20.60 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $23 per kg in Europe
– Offer at $21.70 per kg in Europe
– Bids at $20.80-20.90 per kg in Europe
– Prices indicated at $20.50 per kg in Europe
– 10 tonnes sold at $21.60 per kg in Europe
– 3 tonnes sold at $20.50 per kg in Europe
– 4 tonnes sold at $20.30 per kg in Europe
– Prices indicated at $20.00-20.50 per kg in Europe
– 8 tonnes offered at $22 per kg in Europe
– Prices indicated at $20.50 per kg in Europe

https://www.vanadiumprice.com/trade-log-november-2019-ferro-vanadium-v2o5/

Seems that Mikhail meant it when he said the following on 12.11.19 when viewed in the context of this RedT announcement:

"We really like the management team that Avalon brings. We like some of the expertise that RedT has developed"

Good to see this backed up with action which presumably is designed to increase the efficiency of the management of RedT.

https://www.investegate.co.uk/redt-energy-plc--red-/rns/merger-update--board---management-changes/201911150700034995T/

Morning Pigpen. Too excited to sleep.

That and still having problems with my feet as a result of chemo. Unfortunately keeps me awake.