By Barbara Lewis

LONDON (Reuters) - South African company Bushveld Minerals' purchase, completed last month, of a vanadium mine and processing plant from Russia's Evraz has transformed it from a developer to a big low-cost producer just as prices leapt higher, its CEO said.

The London-listed company's stock has risen more than 300 percent since January, while vanadium prices have more than doubled over a year to nearly $30 per kilogram versus a low of just over $13 in December 2015.

Vanadium is used to strengthen steel and in a new generation of batteries, which advocates say has advantages over lithium for grid storage.

Already developing vanadium projects in the Bushveld region, Bushveld CEO Fortune Mojapelo said the acquisition for $16.5 million of the Vametco mine and processing plant was "transformational for the company and is exactly in line with our strategy of building our vanadium platform".

China and Russia have dominated, with around 60 percent of vanadium output, mostly a byproduct of steel-making.

Most of the rest comes from South Africa, where it is produced directly from vanadium ore.

Some analysts say this is more costly as vanadium as a byproduct is effectively free. Mojapelo disagrees, saying the cost of an entire steel plant is very high especially when the steel sector has come under pressure from oversupply.

Costs for Bushveld are below $20 per kilogram of vanadium, Mojapelo told Reuters in an interview.

Analysts predict a strong market, while China and mining magnate Robert Friedland have thrown their weight behind vanadium rather than lithium as the ultimate battery material.

Friedland, founder of Ivanhoe Mines, is also CEO of a company named High Power Exploration, which holds a controlling stake in Beijing-based vanadium battery storage developer Pu Neng.

"The beauty of the vanadium redox battery is that you can charge and discharge it at the same time, something that can't be done with a lithium battery," Friedland told a conference in London this week.

Analysts also see a shift towards more vanadium produced from ore rather than as a steel byproduct as China tackles environmental regulations and inefficient steel capacity is closed.

Bushveld says it has 434 million tonnes of vanadium and the possibility of growing that to 500 million tonnes in the near term, which equates to more than a century's supply.

It is producing around 2,700 tonnes per year.

Analyst John Meyer of SP Angel said Bushveld had acquired Vametco for less than a tenth of the cost of building a new project.

"For Bushveld, it's a dream scenario," he said. "If vanadium prices continue to rise Vametco will not only be a cash cow, it could be a cash elephant."

(Editing by Dale Hudson)

• [Editor:Wang Linyan]