Australian miner Bryah Resources has withdrawn from a partnership agreement with Australian Vanadium formed to recover nickel, copper and cobalt from the tails stream of the Australian Vanadium project in Gabanintha, Australia.
Australian Vanadium secured a government grant of up to A$49m to advance the project in May 2023.
Bryah Resources was not entitled to the funding but had a liability of A$100,000, which has now been cleared.
The company holds rights to all minerals except chromium, cobalt, iron ore, lithium, manganese, tantalum, titanium, uranium and vanadium over an 80km² project at Gabanintha, 40km south of Meekatharra, Western Australia (WA). Australian Vanadium retains full rights to these excluded minerals.
Bryah Resources retains mineral rights for nickel, copper and gold at the project, which it is planning to sell due to growing interest in critical minerals.
The company said in a statement: “Given the interest in critical minerals and in-bound enquiries to Bryah, Bryah sees an opportunity to rationalise its asset base and dispose of the mineral rights and is actively marketing the sale.
“By monetising these mineral rights as soon as possible, it will free up funds to focus on other assets in the company. The tailings from the AVL project post mining relating to the mineral rights of Bryah could be processed later and treated independently.”
In addition to base metals, Bryah Resources is also reviewing gold prospectivity in the Australian Vanadium project area.
High-grade gold mineralisation has been identified within the mining lease, with significant gold intercepts from previous drilling.
This includes a 10m intercept at 27.5 gram per tonne (g/t) of gold, highlighting the potential for significant gold mineralisation in cross-cutting fault zones.
The indicated mineral resources portion of 16.1 million tonnes (mt) falls within the existing pit designs for Australian Vanadium’s proposed 25-year vanadium project.
This resource is expected to be processed through Australian Vanadium’s 1.6mt per annum crushing, milling and beneficiation plant, which forms part of the 30.9mt high-grade vanadium resource included in the pits.
In January 2025, the Australian Vanadium project, an integrated mining and processing development, received major project status from the WA Government for green energy.
