Ironveld announced the Department of Water Affairs' successful statutory inspection of its project at the Bushveld Complex in South Africa on Wednesday.
The inspection is an essential step in the application for a water use licence, which is the final outstanding permission required before the company can commence mining operations at the vanadium, high purity iron (HPI) and titanium project.

AIM-listed exploration and development company Ironveld expects a resolution to the water licence application to come through in Q2 of 2018.

The current resource contains 27m tonnes of HPI and 1.4bn pounds of vanadium in situ, with the ore body at the site situated close to the surface, allowing for "simple open cast mining", according to Ironveld.

Aside from the licence acquisition, Ironveld is concluding financing for the acquisition of a 7.5MW smelting facility and an independent power plant in Middelburg, South Africa, from Siyanda Inkwali Smelting Services.

The company said this would enable early production of vanadium, HPI and titanium and is expected to deliver "highly attractive economic returns and early free cash flow."

Peter Cox, chief executive of Ironveld, said: "The Company is now nearing the delivery of long awaited value to its shareholders through the execution of a strategically important acquisition and the commencement of mining activity. By quantum, our vanadium and HPI resources are world class and the quality of our product validated through the long-term offtake agreements in place. We look forward to updating our shareholders in due course."

Ironveld announced in October 2016 that it had signed off-take agreements for all three products including with Oreport Ltd who will take 100% of HPI power production for the first five years of production and 100% of titanium slag.

As of 1055 GMT, Ironveld's shares were up 12.50% at 2.25p.

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