Maracás Menchen / Vanadium

View on map

The mine is located in the eastern Bahia State of Brazil, 250km south-west of Salvador, the capital of Bahia, and 800km north-east of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

Stage

Producing

Commodity

Vanadium

Operator

Largo Resources

Location

Brazil

Royalty rate and type
2% NSR

Balance sheet classification
Royalty intangible

The Group has a 2% NSR royalty on all mineral products sold from the area of the Maracás Menchen mine to which the royalty interest relates. The project covers an area in excess of the current mining permits which offers potential for exploration upside. Maracás Menchen is 99.97% owned and operated by TSX-listed Largo Resources Limited (‘Largo’)

According to Largo Maracás Menchen is one of the lowest cost and highest grade vanadium mines in the world. Largo has a vertically integrated business model where its vanadium is used to produce long-duration grid scale vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) for the renewable energy storage market.

The Maracás Menchen mine is a high grade vanadium mine located in the state of Bahia, Brazil. Operated by Largo, a Canadian producer of vanadium, it is the only vanadium mine in Latin America and boasts one of the highest-grade vanadium resources in the world. The mine was commissioned in 2013, with initial mining operations commenced on the Gulçari A Deposit, which is now known as the Campbell Pit. The first vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) from the mine was produced in August 2014.

In December 2021, Largo filed a technical report which highlighted an extension of the mine life to 20 years with operations expected to commence in 2022 and last until 2041.

Royalties from the Maracás Menchen mine totalled $3.6m during the year (2021: $3.3m).

Largo Resources reduced production guidance during the year by approximately 4% to between 11Kt and 12Kt of V2 O5, and delivered a full year production output of 10.4Kt, (2021: 10.3Kt), which was slightly below its guidance. This reduction was driven by a combination of bad weather, scheduled maintenance and change of the mining contractor

Key facts

11Kt

Production and sales during 2022 were 11Kt with annual V2O5 production guidance for 2023 at 11Kt– 2Kt

95%

95% of the water used in ore processing is recycled; the rest is lost in evaporation

VCHARGE

Vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) are an innovative solution to store renewable energy for a low carbon future