Vanadium: Today’s Big Metals Opportunity

By now, most mining investors have the vanadium market on their watch list as a sector in which they need to obtain some exposure. The numbers here speak for themselves. Since the beginning of 2016, the price of vanadium has exploded by nearly a factor of ten.

The price of vanadium has “smashed” previous levels and just hit a new, all-time high of USD$33.90 per pound. This explains what is happening in the vanadium market right now. What many mining investors may not understand as clearly is why this market has gotten so hot, so fast.

Vanadium is also a “battery metal”, but it’s not a part of the battery metals industry with which mining investors are most familiar: the lithium-ion battery market for electric vehicles. Vanadium’s niche is in the opposite end of the battery metals equation, not in power production but rather energy storage cells.

Energy storage has become a crucial component of the Power Revolution in two ways. Greater energy storage capacity is needed to meet spikes in electricity demand resulting from the rise of the electric vehicle industry. Equally, greater energy storage capacity is needed on the supply side – to store excess power produced by renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

This may not sound like as ‘sexy’ an opportunity as the lithium-ion battery market that is fueled by (primarily) cobalt, lithium, nickel and graphite. But again, the numbers speak for themselves. It is vanadium, not these other metals and minerals markets that is setting the pace in terms of prices. Even cobalt (last year’s star performer in metals markets) has not been able to keep pace with vanadium in 2018.

Once again, this is a story (like cobalt) about a scarce metal where it is difficult to scale-up supply to meet soaring demand. But there is one crucial difference between these two metals sectors.

Cobalt occurs almost exclusively as a minor component of other metals deposits, nearly always either copper or nickel. This means that it is not logistically or economically feasible to develop “cobalt mines”. No matter how much the world wants/needs cobalt, (with rare exceptions) it can only be brought to market as a byproduct of other metals mining.

While vanadium is roughly as scarce as cobalt, it can be found in “primary” deposits, i.e. vanadium mineralization where it is possible to develop actual vanadium mines. One mining company that has been keeping a close eye on developments in this market is Spearmint Resources Inc. (CSE: SPMT, FSE: A2AHL5, OTCQB: SPMTF, Forum).

Spearmint saw its opportunity to enter this space early – and leapt on it. On June 14, 2017; SPMT announced the acquisition of the Chibougamau Vanadium Prospects, a 100% interest in four separate “prospects” near Lac Chibougamau, Quebec. The land package was expanded on August 10, 2017 and now totals 9,735 acres.

Of interest to investors is that this is an emerging Vanadium district within the province of Quebec. The largest player in the area is BlackRock Metals (private company) and its Ilmenite vanadium project, which has recently benefitted from a $248 million development package from the provincial government.

In total, the project represents investments valued at nearly $1.3 billion and will create more than 800 jobs during the construction of the mine and mill. Spearmint, currently trading at 5 cents, has just started operations on its Vanadium property directly bordering BlackRock Metals.



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Vanadium is red hot. Quebec is an emerging and prospective jurisdiction for vanadium exploration. And with a current market cap of under $6 million, Spearmint Resources is an economical way to get exposure to this opportunity.



www.spearmintresources.ca




FULL DISCLOSURE: Spearmint Resources Inc. is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.