A Queensland junior miner says vanadium will be to northern Queensland what coal is to the Bowen Basin.

Critical Minerals Group (CMG) is planning an integrated mine-to-battery manufacturing process from its Linfield lease north of Julia Creek in the state’s North West to a battery assembly plant planned for Logan south of Brisbane.

Main image: Spread of critical minerals in Queensland.

It was validating for the company to have attracted investment from Japanese energy giant Idemitsu and the Queensland Government to develop the project, managing director Scott Winter said.

Related: Sedgman builds on critical minerals capabilities

The project was developing at a time of a global energy transition with international decarbonisation targets promoting the installation of vast renewable energy generation.

The flow of energy generated by renewables into the system needed to be more consistent to stabilise the grid and provide power at peak demand times, Mr Winter said.

That was where vanadium large storage batteries came into it, he said.

“… We’re a business that is really building a value chain from the mine all the way through to the battery energy storage solution and driving our business to pick up margins all the way along the value chain instead of just mining and shipping it, which is not the greatest from an Australian perspective. 

“We’ve got 30 percent of the world’s resource (and) we need to build a business that is as far downstream as possible in our backyard. 

“So that’s really driving our demand and the targets set by our federal governing bodies are real and targets that need to be met … they all need batteries.”

The area west of Townsville had great qualities for renewable energy generation, Mr Winter said.

Queensland alone would need around 700 gigawatt hours of energy storage by 2050, which was a 50 to 70 gigawatt battery requirement, he said.

That was the equivalent of 50 million tonnes of vanadium ore, which was a substantial requirement, Mr Winter said.

“The Julia Creek-Richmond area has the resources to satisfy (the projected demand), and WA for that matter, there’s some good resources over there. 

“I see the Julia Creek region in 20 years becoming something similar to the Bowen Basin and how that developed from the seventies through to the nineties and then really hit its straps in the early two thousands. 

“So I can see that happening in that western Townsville region over the next 20, 30 years and it’s possible.”