
CellCube spins out its vanadium mines
The move, into a new copany called V23 Resources, marks a move away from vertical integration designed to protect an essential component in the battery system after its acquisition of Austrian flow battery innovator GILDEMEISTER last year.
Cellcube owns the Bisoni Mackay and Bisoni Rio vanadium assets in Nevada, and intends to retain a 19.9% interest in V23, in addition to certain off-take rights and a net smelter royalty.
“Vanadium has become the new battery metal story and is highly valued for energy storage,” said Mike Neylan, CEO of CellCube. “The price of vanadium has increased by 500% since 2016, outperforming any other battery metal. It is the intention of V23 to seek a public listing in the immediate future.”
The vanadium belt of central Nevada is host to a significant concentration of single-product vanadium deposits in North America such as the Bisoni McKay and Bisoni Rio properties, and Prophecy’s Gibellini property. CellCube’s Bisoni McKay property is a high-grade, pure play vanadium project. Previous drilling has revealed the occurrence of high-grade V2O5 (vanadium pentoxide) in the primary (carbonaceous shale) mineralized material which contains the largest vanadium resource on the property. Several drill holes completed in primary mineralization suggest the deposit is open at depth in some areas and an enrished zone of up to 35 feet in width has been identified immediately below the redox zone
CellCube’s Bisoni McKay and Bisoni-Rio project is one of the largest pure play vanadium projects in North America with 4,115 acres contiguous to the Gibellini deposit held by Prophecy Development Corp. Vanadium is most often found in association with other metals such as iron, lead or uranium that must first be removed before vanadium recovery, but the drilling and exploration so far has indicated that Bisoni McKay’s pure play vanadium resource does not possess any significant concentrations of any of these metals.
Only 12 per cent of the Bisoni McKay area has been drilled, (none of the Bisoni-Rio yet), which has already resulted in the estimation of 11.9 million tons at an average grade of 0.39 per cent vanadium pentoxide. Last year, Cellcube staked 162 claims on the Bisoni-Rio property from the Bisoni McKay right up to the Gibellini vanadium property.
CellCube is listed in Toronto and Frankfurt and develops, manufactures, and its Enerox, (formerly GILDEMEISTER energy storage) subsidiary in Wiener Neudorf, Austria, markets energy storage systems on the basis of vanadium redox flow technology and has over 130 project installations and a 10 year operational track record. Its highly integrated energy storage system solutions feature 99% residual energy capacity after 11,000 cycles with the focus on larger scale containerized modules. Basic building blocks consist of a 250kW unit family with 4, 6 and 8 hours variation in energy capacity.
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