Special Report: Pursuit Minerals has already proven it can produce very high vanadium magnetite concentrate from its Scandinavian projects, but it has gone further still with a substantial increase in recoveries.
This is good news for the economics of the project because it can bring down the cost with only minor adjustments to the processing parameters.
It was also good for the company’s share price, which shot up 48 per cent on Tuesday to an intra-day high of 3.1c.
A simple increase in crushing size has delivered a 38 per cent increase in mass recoveries from the Airijoki project in Sweden and a 66 per cent increase from the Koitelainen project in Finland.
Mass recoveries from Airijoki climbed from 13.3 per cent to 18.3 per cent, while mass recoveries from Koitelainen jumped from 5.3 per cent to 8.8 per cent.
Managing director Jeremy Read said the initial results from the metallurgical test work program were highly encouraging.
“These results represent an easy win for us on both the Airijoki and Koitelainen projects as we can substantially increase recoveries just by initially crushing the vanadium mineralisation to a coarser size fraction,” he said.
>> Read more about Pursuit Minerals
Metallurgical work is continuing, and Pursuit is now looking at using a “wet high intensity magnetic separation” process to further increase the mass recovery and the grade of the vanadium magnetite concentrate.
The keys to determining a good vanadium deposit come down to the overall magnetite recovery and the grade of the vanadium you get from that magnetic concentrate.
>>Read: Vanadium stocks guide: Here’s everything you need to know
Pursuit has already delivered results of as high as 2.5 per cent vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) in magnetite concentrate which competes with the very best projects around the world.
The company is speeding towards the completion of scoping studies for its Airijoki and Koitelainen projects.
The mass recovery and vanadium recovery results will be included in the scoping studies.
The outcome of scoping studies is expected to be known in the next week or two and Pursuit is working hard to differentiate itself from other vanadium players.
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