Lithium Australia’s (ASX:LIT) subsidiary Envirostream Australia is poised to make its first shipment of mixed metal dust (MMD) containing energy metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium to South Korea.

Envirostream successfully produced MMD from its new battery recycling plant in Melbourne, which is designed to recover about 95 per cent of the materials from a range of used batteries including lithium-ion, alkaline and nickel-metal-hydride batteries.

The plant has the capacity to recycle up to 3000 tonnes of batteries each year.

Sales of scrap steel, copper and aluminium recovered from the spent batteries will also recommence from the plant next month.

This follows Lithium Australia increasing its stake in Envirostream from 23.9 per cent to 73.7 per cent earlier this week.

“The processing of spent batteries not only improves the sustainability of the battery industry but also prevents undesirable materials going to landfill, which reduces the potential for groundwater contamination,” managing director Adrian Griffin said.

Shares in LIT were up 6 per cent this morning to 3.5c.

Read more:
Why Lithium Australia wants to separately list its battery recycling assets

On the other side of the globe, Aura Energy (ASX:AEE) has achieved average vanadium recoveries of about 96.5 per cent V2O5 from metallurgical test work on samples taken from its Häggån vanadium project in Sweden.

The strong recoveries using acid pressure leaching in the scoping level test work provides the company with confidence that its proposed flow sheet for processing Häggån mineralisation is robust, Aura said.

Results from the test work will be incorporated into the scoping study, which will be delivered shortly.

Häggån has a resource of 2 billion tonnes grading 0.3 per cent V2O5, or 13.3 billion pounds of contained V2O5. This includes a 42 million tonne at 0.35 per cent resource in the higher confidence indicated category within a coherent near-surface zone.

Aura shares jumped 25 per cent to 0.5c in morning trade.

In other battery metals news today:

ScandiVanadium’s (ASX:SVD) drilling has confirmed that mineralisation at its Skåne project in Sweden continues within two flat lying seams. Assays returned consistent thickness and grades across the target area with hits of 12.3m at 0.39 per cent V2O5, 10.5m at 0.39 per cent V2O5 and 11.7m at 0.4 per cent V2O5.

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