RE: Someone that sells12 Aug 2019 15:40
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The majority of vanadium is mined and recovered as a by-product from the mining of vanadiferous magnetite iron ores in China and Russia. These mines are operated primarily as sources of iron, so the supply of vanadium from these operations is linked to the price of iron rather than vanadium. The broad trend, particularly in China, is to reduce the supply of iron from these low-grade magnetite ores and to replace it with high-grade imported ore; the net impact is a sharp reduction in environmental pollution. As the chart shows, supply from these by-product sources of vanadium is stable but arguably slowly declining.
At present, vanadium is recovered as the primary product from three mines worldwide, of which two are in South Africa and the third is a recent start-up in Brazil. The two mines in South Africa are Bushveld’s Vametco mine and Glencore’s Rhovan mine and smelter.
Vametco produces around 2,600 tonnes of contained vanadium per year in the form of Nitrovan (vanadium nitride). It has reserves of 26 million tonnes grading 0.525% V2O5 in rock.
Rhovan is owned by Glencore and mines ore in a similar manner to the Vametco operation. It produces around 9,500 tonnes of contained V2O5 per year in the form of ferrovanadium and vanadium pentoxide. It has reserves of 37.4 million tonnes grading 0.5% V2O5.
The Maracás Menchen mine is located in the eastern Bahia State of Brazil and is owned by a Canadian company, Largo Resources. It started production in 2014 and is now operating in a steady state, producing a little over 10,000 tonnes of contained V2O5 (6,000 tonnes of contained vanadium) per year. An expansion to take capacity to 12,000 tonnes of contained V2O5 is in hand. The mine has reserves of 19 million tonnes grading 1.15% V2O5, which are sufficient for another nine years of operation at current rates.
A few other mines have been primary producers in the relatively recent past. In particular, the Evraz Highveld operations in South Africa were shut down in 2015 after they became chronically unprofitable. This was a vertically integrated business that used magnetite ore from the high-grade Mapochs mine on the eastern limb of the Bushveld Complex. The lump ore was used as a feed for an electric arc steelworks in Witbank. As a by-product, the steelworks produced a **** that contained the vanadium. This **** was combined with fine ore from Mapochs and used as a process feed by the Vanchem processing plant, also in Witbank. At full capacity, the Highveld plant supplied about 11,000 tonnes of contained vanadium per year, equivalent to more than 10% of global supply.
The Windimurra mine in Australia was expected to be a major and long-life producer of vanadium when it started production in early 2000. However, it was abandoned after only three years of operation as its operating results proved to be substantially below expectations. Apparently, the plant was only able to recover around 20% of the magnetite tha
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