Canadian junior mining firm Golden Share Resources Corporation has signed an agreement worth an estimated $906 million with a US government laboratory for R&D into novel vanadium based solid-state battery technologies.
Golden Share said it had signed the deal with Battelle Memorial Institute, which runs the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for the US Department of Energy.
Under the terms of the agreement, Golden Share will cover the total cost— with $100m payable immediately followed by the balance spread over monthly payments to Batelle.
President and CEO of Golden Share Nick Zeng said the company intended to “remain fully engaged in this exciting nascent industry while optimising use of its financial and management resources”.
Golden Share said that in its proposed solid-state form, “the vanadium battery will have various advantages of high energy density and potentially significantly simplified battery cell design, different from both traditional solid-state and redox flow batteries”.
The deal follows a partnership agreement Golden Share signed in 2016 to acquire high purity vanadium produced by Chinese state-owned North West Mining and Exploration Group (NWME) at that company’s Qianjiaping vanadium mine in Shaanxi Province.
Under the partnership, Golden Share acts as the “exclusive broker” in the US and Canada for high purity vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) produced at Qianjiaping, which started production in 2011.
Golden Share has already been granted a non-exclusive commercial licence to produce, use and sell vanadium electrolytes developed by PNNL.
