London investors eye Bushveld Minerals as vanadium soars

EDINBURGH — Bushveld Minerals has failed to make a pre-tax profit over the past five years, but that's not deterring investors in the South African company listed in London. The BMN share price has been bounding steadily upwards over the past year, reflecting the rising price of vanadium. Bushveld Minerals describes itself as "a low cost, vertically integrated primary vanadium producer, with ownership of high-grade assets, supplying over three per cent of the global vanadium market". Vanadium is the latest beneficiary of the battery craze, says The Economist of the metal. – Jackie Cameron

By Thulasizwe Sithole

Surging prices for vanadium, a niche metal used to harden steel, have been a boon for London-listed Bushveld Minerals this year, helping fuel a share price rally amid a broader industry pullback. Now the South African company wants to target vanadium's growing use in another industry: batteries, with an ambitious target to manufacture the technology as the country's electricity grid moves away from coal-powered generation, says the Financial Times.

"But Bushveld faces a conundrum: while higher vanadium prices are good for miners, they are detrimental to battery makers, who need to further reduce their costs to make them economic for use on electricity grids. To solve this Bushveld hopes to lease the metal to battery companies as well as assemble the batteries in South Africa. It wants to build a $10m plant to produce battery electrolyte, backed by the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation.

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