Australian Vanadium Limited (AVL) has identified significant Cobalt assays in the Gabanintha Vanadium Project located in Western Australia by reviewing previous drill programmes.
Earlier campaigns at the project focused on the vanadium-titanium-iron mineral resource and no major analysis was carried out for its Cobalt potentiality.
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Recently, the demand of Cobalt increased as a strategic metal used to manufacture batteries.
The company informed that upon reviewing other metals data before the planned Mineral Resource review, Cobalt was identified at the layered mafic igneous sequence at Gabanintha dispersed within the magnetite-rich layers.
AVL estimates the presence of Cobalt in a non-magnetic sulphide component of the ore.
The resource database comprises of 10,979 x 1m Cobalt assay results (RC and diamond) from the previous drilling.
Among them, 1,270 x 1m samples assayed over 200ppm Cobalt and an average 275ppm Cobalt.
According to the review, the maximum assay is 0.18% (1828ppm) Co (in GRC102 from 42-43m) while the magnetic fraction hosts chrome, manganese and nickel.
Currently, the company is conducting a more detailed review of all the available information on Cobalt and other minor metals found in the project to devise the possible recovery pathways.
Further analysis of Cobalt resources will include resource estimation and review of metallurgical results completed as a part of the beneficiation test work in 2015.
The Gabanintha Project is situated in a gabbroic layered igneous complex that hosts bands of large disseminated titanomagnetite in a sequence over 200m in thickness.
Currently, it is one of the high-grade vanadium projects with existing Measured Resources of 7.0Mt at 1.09% grade V2O5 Indicated Resources of 17.8Mt at 0.68% grade V2O5 and Inferred Resources of 66.7Mt at 0.83% grade V2O5, according to compliance with the JORC Code 2012.
