Elysee Development (ELC.V) has announced US Vanadium LLC, wherein it owns a 10.3% stake, has entered into an agreement with Evraz to acquire an Arkansas-based plant. The plant produces high-purity vanadium oxides and chemicals that could be used for several industrial applications. With a total nameplate capacity of 12 million pounds of vanadium pentoxide per year, the facility could supply the US with approximately 60% of its apparent Vanadium needs which are estimated at 9,800 tonnes (21.5 million pounds) by the US Geological Survey.
It took US Vanadium quite a while to agree on buying the facility as negotiations have been going on for about a year, and USV has been using the Evraz Stratcor plant since the end of last year to ‘toll process’ vanadium-bearing material into a finished product so USV LLC is already familiar with the plant and its operating statistics.
USV’s main priority isn’t the lower value Vanadium Pentoxide material but the new owners of the plant will focus on high purity vanadium electrolyte which could be used in the Vanadium Redox Flow batteries, as Elysee’s investee expects this market to gain momentum.
In other news, Elysee purchased 2.8 million shares of Minera Alamos (MAI.V) at C$0.10 and 2 million units of Aftermath Silver (AAG.H.V) and given the recent share prices of respectively C$0.175 and C$0.31, these two positions already represent an unrealized profit of C$670,000, taking advantage of the current momentum on the precious metals market. But an unrealized profit is meaningless as the Aftermath shares are for instance subject to a 4 month hold period, and nobody knows what Aftermath will be trading at when about half of its expanded share count will become tradeable on one single day.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Elysee Development Corp. Elysee is a sponsor of the website.
