JandJ,Which of the other vanadium miners on the ASX is even...

JandJ,

Which of the other vanadium miners on the ASX is even proposing to dig their ore underground? None, is the answer. So stop mischaracterising the competition to make it look like VMC is the only miner proposing to dig an open pit to get ore. Off the top of my head, every other single vanadium junior on the ASX is proposing an open pit mine. 

VMC has yet to even do a scoping study. All they have done is dunk some 1990's samples in acid and detect vanadium in the liquid. That's it. 

Their claims of low capex are completely without factual basis until the PFS. For reference, the list of capex given on the other thread shows two types of operations;

- salt roast to produce vanadium pentoxide flake, at 2-3Mtpa = c. $380-650M for 12-16ktpa product

- acid leach and SXEW to produce vanadium pentoxide, titanium dioxide and iron hydroxide = $2.25B capex to produce....who knows how much

So when there's talk of low capex, and the proposal is a SXEW operation, you have one datapoint to work from and a theoretical capex saving just because the rock is oxidised? 

I doubt it. Oxidised rock costs less to dig because you do not need to blast it, but the idea it is cheap to process is fanciful. The capital costs for a large scale SXEW plant isn't likely to be cheap, or KRC would have got away with the whole thing for sub $380M and everyone would be digging DSO concentrates and shunting them to the SXEW plants that would proliferate everywhere. 

So, why aren't SXEW plants being proposed on deposits like, say, TMT and AVL with 1.2% V2O5, 58% Fe, and 11% Ti head grade? Surely these operations would make even more money because, despite having to blast and crush their rock, there is just so much more metal in it than KRC (14% Fe, 5% Ti and 0.4% V2O5)? 

Yeah, I dunno, but it isn't because the management of those companies put out a 13 page powerpoint and ticked some boxes in a list of dot points.