Critical minerals company Tivan on Friday announced plans to switch its focus from its Mt Peake vanadium/titanium/iron project, in the Northern Territory, to its wholly owned Speewah vanadium/titianium/iron project, in Western Australia.

The company earlier this year acquired full ownership of the Speewah project following a A$20-million deal with fellow-listed King River Resources.

The company said on Friday that the board had now recognised the Speewah project as Tivan’s flagship project, and would be prioritising the development planning as the core mission of the company. Tivan’s project team has established the delivery pathway and indicative delivery timeline for the project, concluding with a front-end engineering design study in support of a final investment decision.

This timeline would see a scoping study on the project take place in 2023, followed by prefeasibility and feasibility studies in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

Tivan told shareholders on Friday that the company’s Mt Peake project remained a key asset, but was now expected to play a refocused facilitation role in the commercialisation of Speewah and the TIVAN mineral processing technology, through providing initial ore samples to be used in the company’s planned TIVAN pilot plant project in Darwin.

Given the priority focus on Speewah, the board has made the decision to retain the main mineral lease over the Mt Peake deposit but to relinquish the ancillary mineral leases and the two access authorities previously granted to support the Mt Peake development.