Salt roasting for AVL vanadium?, page-42

Oxide Material

The Gabanintha orebody contains a proportion of material within 30m of the surface that is oxidised or partially oxidised. The effect of this oxidation within a magnetite orebody such as Gabanintha is to reduce the magnetic nature of the ore. This will reduce the mass yield, vanadium yield and concentrate V2O5 grade if passed through similar processes as the fresh and transitional ores. Work in the current program has confirmed that fully oxidised material (Composites 20-24) behaves highly variably using high-intensity magnetic separation or WHIMS (6000G). The materials, which have an average head grade of 1.19% V2O5, produced a concentrate of 1.26% V2O5 with silica (SiO2) only reducing from 6.78% to 5.25%. Only 54% of the vanadium reported to the concentrate. Combined silica and alumina of 11% offer a significant opportunity to improve the product yield and grade from oxide feed material. The work to date confirms the previous results identified by AVL in its metallurgical studies in 2015 (See ASX Announcement 7 December 2015). The vanadium at Gabaninta is generally associated with magnetite (an iron rich mineral) in fresh and transitional material. Magnetite (Fe3O4 or Fe2(III)Fe(II)O4) is ferrimagnetic and amenable to magnetic separation. In oxidised ore the magnetite has partially or completely altered to a variety of other forms, such as martite, maghemite, goethite and limonite, while hematite is only ferric (Fe(III)) and amenable to magnetic separation to a lesser degree or not at all. The vanadium in the oxidised portions of the high grade zone is present in variable amounts of magnetic and non-magnetic iron minerals (see Fig 5) which can account for the high variability in the recoveries achieved in the oxide material to date. Testwork on oxide samples is ongoing.

Taken from the last metallurgical update it does seem that there is a varying degree on material that suits magnetic separation, but the description of this also seems to indicate that the company recognises this and is taking steps to achieve a more consistent recovery rate. Although this may be a concern for you and I applaud your recognising this detail, I think that as investors we need to either research other processes that have been used when dealing with the oxidised ore and possibly look at what other comapanies have done as this cannot be the only instance of oxidised ore.

This 30m still lends itself to a relatively good rate of recovery and should still be profitable to process. It will still be fed into the same cycle and is only a part of the deposit to be processed.

There is more detailed analysis of the results of the testwork on the oxidised ore compared to the transitional and the fresh material in appendix 1 of the latest metallurgical update announcement.

I have strong faith in the skills of the recently appointed experts ability knowledge of the processes that they may already have an understanding of oxidised ore and how to deal with it as this ain't their first rodeo IMHO.

Cheers guys

AVL Long and strong