Queensland-based minerals explorer Pursuit Minerals (ASX:PUR) has announced their plans to explore for vanadium – a highly sought-after battery metal – in Sweden and Finland.
With the world moving to renewable energy and several European countries looking to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040, vanadium-based batteries are set to have an increasingly important role to play in energy storage in the near future.
Pursuit Minerals Managing Director Jeremy Read said the company couldn’t miss an opportunity to explore for a promising metal in a world-class minerals region.
“With the localisation of the energy grid, due to increasing renewable energy production, and global transport fleets moving to electric vehicles, the world is requiring more vanadium due to its use in vanadium redox batteries,” Mr Read said.
“Sweden was the country where vanadium was first identified as a metal and we have been able to secure high quality vanadium projects in both Sweden and Finland by submitting mineral tenement applications over open ground.”
“Finland and Sweden are excellent countries to undertake mineral exploration and project development – ranking 1st and 16th on the 2017 Fraser Institute Survey – with all the projects we have applied for close to reliable low-cost grid power, sealed roads and rail infrastructure,” Mr Read said.
Pursuit has lodged applications to explore seven areas in the region – Karhujupukka and Koitelainen in Finland; and Airijoki, Kramsta, Kullberget, Simesvallen and Sumessjon in Sweden.
“These diverse projects provide us with a number of exciting opportunities to uncover economic deposits of vanadium,” Mr Read said.
“Former surveys of the Finnish projects produced promising historical estimates of mineralisation, with the best historical deposit being 70Mt @ 0.7% V2O5%, and four of our Swedish tenements – located just 300km north-west of Stockholm – the most promising projects in a region with known iron-titanium-vanadium mineralisation.”
“Pursuit minerals is led by a management team with extensive experience in base and precious metals projects all over the world and we couldn’t be more excited to bring this experience to such promising projects in Scandinavia,” he said.
Pursuit is currently preparing works programs for the northern hemisphere summer. The company is aiming to prepare the projects for drilling during the next winter field season from November 2018 until April 2019.
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