Pursuit Minerals reports ‘exceptional’ grade vanadium concentrate at Koitelainen Vosa

Pursuit Minerals (ASX: PUR) will forge ahead with a scoping study for its Koitelainen Vosa prospect in northern Finland after results confirmed the presence of high-grade vanadium magnetite concentrate.

The Brisbane-based company said the geochemical results were retrieved from the re-sampling of 11 historical drill holes, with grades of vanadium magnetite concentrate exceeding 2.4% over significant intervals.

Results from the re-sampling include 29.9m at 2.4% vanadium pentoxide, 11.6m at 2.8% vanadium pentoxide, 38.2m at 2.6% vanadium pentoxide and 6.2m at 3.3% vanadium pentoxide.

Pursuit Minerals managing director Jeremy Read said the “extremely encouraging” results could underpin the delivery of an inferred resource towards the upper end of the prospect’s exploration target range.

“Most of the magnetite concentrates produced are grading in excess of 2% vanadium pentoxide, with some values in excess of 3% vanadium pentoxide, which is super high grade for a vanadium magnetite concentrate and differentiates the Koitelainen project from most other pre-production vanadium projects,” he said.

Full steam ahead

Pursuit Minerals has made swift progress at Koitelainen Vosa despite only picking up the vanadium ground last April.

The acquired exploration tenements in Sweden and Finland contained historical deposits of vanadium and extensive confirmed areas of vanadium mineralisation.

The re-assayed historical drill holes will now enable the company to upgrade Koitelainen Vosa’s exploration target to a JORC inferred mineral resource, which is scheduled for release next month.

Koitelainen Vosa’s estimated exploration target stands at 80-105 million tonnes containing 4-10.5Mt of magnetite at 2-2.3% vanadium pentoxide for 80,000-241,000 tonnes of vanadium pentoxide.

Following this, Pursuit Minerals said it intended to complete an internal scoping study before the end of April.

Vanadium outlook positive

The company remains bullish on the commercial potential for Koitelainen Vosa, given the prospect is in proximity to infrastructure with a railway line running south to a proposed vanadium smelter.

It is also confident in the market fundamentals for vanadium, with Pursuit Minerals noting that Finland has produced up to 10% of the world’s vanadium in the past.

Vanadium is predominantly used as a strengthening additive in steel and some forms of iron. The use of vanadium in vanadium flow batteries has really caught the attention of investors, with both vanadium equities and the metal enjoying price rallies.

And with Europe rapidly transforming its energy grid to renewable energy, which will require large increases in battery storage, Pursuit Minerals believes its projects are well placed to participate in the energy changes underway in the region.

Directors personally endorse Pursuit

Earlier this week, all four company directors made a financial investment in the company.

The issue of about 7.3 million shares and 2.4 million options was undertaken at $0.037 per share, representing a $270,000 investment into Pursuit.

The issue of shares to directors came in addition to a $2 million capital raising completed last November.

Pursuit chairman Peter Wall said the directors’ investment was a strong endorsement of the company’s vanadium projects.

“The fact that each of our directors has invested in the company should give existing shareholders and potential new investors strong confidence in the outlook for Pursuit,” he said.

Investors responded well to the release of the re-assayed geochemical results, pushing the company’s shares up 11.4% in morning trade to $0.039.