Australian Vanadium Ltd (ASX:AVL) has received $618,904 from the Australian Federal Government’s Research and Development (R&D) Tax Incentive Scheme for the 2020/21 tax year.
This refund applies to work R&D undertaken in the 2020/21 financial year.
The refund is administered jointly by the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources. The self-assessment scheme encourages companies to engage in R&D benefiting Australia by providing a tax offset for eligible activities.
R&D activities support technical strength in AVL’s processes, with innovative work that attracted the refund including:
- production of high purity 99.4% vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) using simplified circuit;
- energy efficiency and world leading vanadium extraction from pyrometallurgy roast-leach test-work;
- high vanadium extractions of greater than 92% in two-stage leach process;
- production of FeTi coproduct representative samples; and
- unique vanadium processing circuit to be protected through patent application.
“The R&D scheme is an excellent program which encourages companies to develop their processes and find innovative ways to achieve the best results,” AVL managing director Vincent Algar said.
“AVL has undertaken industry-leading work over the past few years and the 2020/21 program included work that was vital for inputs into the bankable feasibility study (BFS) which was released earlier this year.
“The company continues to set itself apart from other vanadium projects, through thorough testing and research work which enables scaling during project build to be as far de-risked as is possible.
"Doing this work before construction reduces project cost blowouts and issues having to be resolved once processes are in place – a problem that has been seen in many projects over the years where technical work has not been as robust.”
Focus on development
AVL’s R&D work for the refund period was focused on development of processing techniques to produce steel and battery-grade vanadium pentoxide and vanadium electrolytes, while recovering iron and titanium from a vanidiferous titanomagnetite (VTM) ore.
The company also undertook work on pilot-scale pelletising and roasting of AVL concentrate utilising a grate kiln; hydrometallurgical process test-work; process work to recover titanium and iron from waste streams; production of FeTi coproduct samples; concentrate recovery variability test-work and vanadium electrolyte analysis.
AVL’s unique combination of physical beneficiation, pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical steps has been combined to underline a patent application which was published by the International Bureau in October 2022.
The AVL team continues to advance the Australian Vanadium Project at Gabanintha towards a development decision.