Earlier this year, Neometals was involved in an agreement to secure 50% ownership of joint venture company Recycling Industries Scandinavia AB or "RISAB" to develop the Vanadium recovery project in Finland. 

The balance of RISAB equity is held by unlistes by unlisted Australian mineral development company Critical Metals whilst Neometals holds approximately 19% of Critical issued capital. Both parties are working together to evaluate the viability of constructing a facility in Pori, Finland that will be employed to refine and extract high-purity vanadium pentoxide from the by-product of producing vanadium-bearing steel.  

The feasibility study has shown an increase in potential carbon-negative and high-purity vanadium production of 19.1 million pounds per year, which has been secured under Neometals' 10-year supply agreement with SSAB. The revised feasibility findings incorporate information from an earlier engineering cost analysis and are based on a feed rate of 300,000 tonnes per year.

- Neometals proposed vanadium recovery plant in Finland 

Although vanadium has historically been utilised as a steelmaking hardening element, the battery industry is becoming increasingly more interested in it as grid-scale power storage is predicted to be a lucrative market.

In these applications, the advantages of metals over lithium-ion include favourable scale-up costs, safety, lifespan, and constancy of power output over longer times. According to the global industry group Vanitec, the majority of the world's vanadium demands are currently met by steel slag.

Additionally, Neometals signed a technical licence deal with RISAB for its intellectual property related to slag processing in exchange for a 2.5% gross sales royalty and gave SSAB a guarantee for an upgraded slag feedstock supply arrangement. According to the binding agreement, SSAB will provide 2 million tonnes of slag, with RISAB having the first right on more as they become available.

The necessity to make a project investment decision by June 30, 2023, is still there in the new slag supply agreement, but the deadline for starting production by December 31, 2024, has been removed.

Neometals says the new recovery operation offers an opportunity to extract high grade vanadium from slag without the need for a mining operations costs and carbon footprint.