You are correct. Depending on the type of invention, a good...

You are correct. Depending on the type of invention, a good patent strategy is to file in the manufacturing (using) countries and the major market countries.

Vanadium Corp's (VC) press release was directed to the agreement to grant an exclusive licence for the patent in Australia. To me, that indicates an intention to use the invention in Australia. 

The PCT patent application was filed in August 2018. That gives them until August 2019 to decide where they will seek national patents (National Phase[NP]). After that, the application will be examined in the selected countries before a patent can be granted. 

As mentioned above, the PCT examiner considers that many of the claims are invalid, so there may need to be amendments to the claims during the NP to exclude prior publications, or the application may be totally rejected. 

This announcement is relevant to AVL if we wish to use the patented method, keeping in mind the technology which is in the public domain. It also tells us the possible intentions of VC as to the method they propose to use. .