Life has been breathed into another mothballed Western Australian mining project, with a Mineral Resources-led consortium securing a deal with receivers to racpitalise Windimurra Vanadium’s namesake project.

Mineral Resources has entered into a heads of agreement with receiver KordaMentha under which its consortium will take a majority stake in the company, with the group’s secured lenders taking a minority stake.

Windimurra has been in receivership since February this year.

The new consortium will provide funding to complete construction and ramp up production at the project.

“We would be looking at hopefully being in a position to get the construction phase back on track by February next year,” KordaMentha receiver and manager Brian McMaster told MINING DAILY.

“Construction and ramp up is then probably going to take seven or eight months.

“So all together it will be the best part of next year.”

Around 300 workers were at the project at the time of entering receivership.

According to McMaster, the renewed construction plans will see the return of many of those positions.

“When we got involved there were a few hundred people involved in that construction phase, so we would expect there will be those sorts of numbers back there again,” McMaster said.

News of the Windimurra revival comes in the same week that Minara Resources was tipped to become the new owner of BHP Billiton’s mothballed Ravensthorpe nickel project, which was closed in January after only 10 months of operation.

Around 1800 local workers lost their jobs when the mine closed and BHP is expected to make a decision on the project’s future by the end of the year.