NewPeak Metals is set to acquire the Allaru vanadium project in the Julia Creek region in a $5 million deal with private exploration company AusVan Battery Metals.

Allaru has an inferred JORC resource of 710 million tonnes of vanadium and sits among a raft of vanadium projects set to support the steel and vanadium redox flow battery industries.

NewPeak has executed a binding term sheet that will see it purchase all of the shares in AusVan in return for $5 million worth of NewPeak shares.

Along with that transaction, it plans to undertake a capital raising for $2 million to $3 million.

AusVan holds six granted exploration permits for minerals (EPM) and one EPM application comprising a total of 468 sub-blocks covering 1498sq km.

NewPeak said the vendors included CSE-listed Mineral Road Discovery (holding about 57 per cent of AusVan’s total issued capital) and Mammoth Resources (which holds about 5 per cent).

NewPeak non-executive director Emma Fairhurst is also a director of AusVan and executive chairperson of MRD. Mammoth is an entity associated with Gerhard Redelinghuys, who (with his associates) is also a current substantial holder of NewPeak.

NewPeak has outlined plans for the project, including:

• Additional exploration drilling to further define lateral stratigraphic continuation and grade of the ore body throughout the resource areas.
• Further scout exploration drilling to test for shallow, oxidised mineralised Toolebuc Formation across the wider project area.
• Additional metallurgical test work, including additional composite samples, to increase representation of ore type and variation.
• Further beneficiation test work to optimise roasting, grinding, cyclone and flotation options, investigate additional leach options to reduce acid consumption, and testing of the proposed precipitation circuits to understand and improve product purity.

NewPeak describes Allaru as a valuable addition to its portfolio of critical minerals projects.

This includes the Treuer Range vanadium and uranium project in the Northern Territory and George River uranium and rare earth elements project in Canada.

You may also like: