Neometals used a 10% discount rate for its NPV calculation.

The project, located in Western Australia, could generate annual free cashflow of $136 million for the first 10 years of operations.

"The PFS confirms ‘value-in-use' for Barrambie's product basket and supports dialogue with potential offtake partner Jiuxing," Neometals said.

For the first half of the project's circa 20-year life annual output would be 522,000t of ilmenite, 57,000t of middling ilmenite and 402,000t of iron vanadium concentrate.

"The potential to bring in excess of 500,000tpa of high-quality ilmenite to the market has high strategic value," Neometals said.

Neometals had $51 million cash at the end of September, plus receivables and investments of $29.8 million.

The company's core focus is "the continuous development and commercialisation of our proprietary innovative technologies with strong global partners to generate value through sustainable production of battery materials".

Aside from its upstream Barrambie venture, it has three core battery materials businesses targeting the commercialisation of proprietary, low-cost, low-carbon process technologies.

The company was one of the very first on ASX to become an upstream lithium spodumene producer before making its final exit from that venture in March 2019.

Shares in Neometals were off 2% to $1.06 in early trade, capitalising the company at $586 million.