PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Tivan has struck a A$20-million deal with ASX-listed King River Resources to acquire the Speewah vanadium/titianium/iron project, in Western Australia.

Under a binding term sheet signed between the two companies, Tivan would acquire all the issued capital of Speewah Mining, which owns the Speewah project, in exchange for A$10-million of new Tivan shares, at a deemed price of 10c each, and A$10-million in cash by way of a three-staged payment, including an initial A$2.5-million payment on completion of the acquisition.

The initial A$2.5-million will be paid from existing cash reserves, with Tivan telling shareholders that it would need to raise capital for the remaining cash payments.

Tivan, previously known as TNG, said on Monday that the acquisition would result in the company owning two large-scale vanadium in titanomagnetite deposits in Australia, including its own Mt Peake vanadium/titanium/iron project in the Northern Territory, providing the company with crucial impetus for feeding its planned centralised TIVAN processing facility at Middle Arm in Darwin.

Speewah hosts the largest reported vanadium in titanomagnetite resources in Australia, and one of the largest globally, containing Joint Ore Reserve Committee-compliant mineral resource of 4.7-billion tonnes at 0.30% vanadium pentoxide, 14.7% iron and 3.3% oxide.

Beneficiation test work undertaken by King River on Speewah ore to produce magnetite concentrates confirmed that the vanadium grades in Speewah concentrates are some of the highest returned from any titanomagnetite resource globally. Speewah is considered amenable to processing with the TIVAN process.

“Speewah is a game changer for Tivan, for northern Australia and for the critical minerals sector globally. It provides crucial impetus for the board in progressing the Tivan processing facility at Middle Arm in Darwin, and it radically improves the company’s outlook in pursuing feasibility and long-term value creation for shareholders. My central expectation is that the acquisition will put Tivan and Darwin at the forefront of forward-facing critical minerals on a global basis in the years and decades ahead,” said Tivan executive chairperson Grant Wilson.

“The Speewah acquisition extends well beyond the relevant tenement holdings, to include all of the extensive pre-development work that KRR has pursued and financed over the past decade. The prior involvement of SMS Group and APM Consultants, both long-standing service providers of Tivan, will assist materially in expediting project feasibility studies.

“Additionally, the extensive prior planning of the company at Middle Arm will serve to expedite project delivery, and has already been strongly facilitative in onboarding processes with the master planning team for Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct (MASDP) at the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics.”

Wilson said that Mt Peake remained an important strategic asset for the company, and would play an instrumental role moving forward.

“Tivan is now a unique proposition, capturing the minerals processing technology that Tivan owns and has developed over many years, the qualities and scale of the Speewah resource, the extensive development work that King River has furthered over the past decade, and the far-reaching strategic advantages and highly advanced common use infrastructure offered by MASDP.

“With the proximity of MASDP to proposed large-scale renewable energy sources, Tivan now has the foundations required to build a sustainable, long-life, vertically integrated megaproject, the first and only of its kind in the world,” Wilson said.

The transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including an independent geological assessment of the resource estimate at Speewah, and King River shareholder approval.