top of page
Writer's pictureDoug Bright

Venture Minerals hails “best” Australian rare earths drill result

Updated: Mar 24


Venture Minerals stage-one resource definition drilling in progress at its Jupiter resource target. Credit: File

Venture Minerals has marched to a six-month share price high after unveiling what it says is Australia’s best-ever rare earths drill hit of 48m at 3025 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO) at its Jupiter prospect in Western Australia’s Mid West region.


The company’s latest set of results from its Brothers project, featuring drill intercepts as high as an eye-catching 2m at 20,538 TREO, triggered a meteoric share price rise of more than 87 per cent in this morning’s intraday trading, jumping from yesterday’s close of 0.8c to touch 1.5c.


And the real beauty of the assay roll-out is that the headline result is not just a one-hit wonder, as it comes with a handful of impressive runs including the next top intercept of 30m at 3142ppm TREO that has an included 12m at 4673ppm and another 2m going 10,266ppm.


The third-best drillhole threw up a 56m intercept going 1607ppm TREO including 24m going 2060ppm.


While other explorers have reported longer intercepts or higher grades in Australia, Venture says its headline hit stands above them all when the intercept is subjected to the standard comparative procedure of multiplying the length in metres by the analytical value in rare earths grade. By that measure, it clearly edges out Cygnus Metals revelation from last September that it had secured a 79m hit at 1576ppm TREO from 32m at its Bencubbin project in WA’s Wheatbelt region.


West Cobar Metals also set its share price alight in March last year when it revealed a high-grade intercept from its Salazar project near Esperance of 1m going 22,316ppm TREO. It was slightly higher than Venture’s top grade released today, but with half the width.

These record-breaking, ultra-high-grade REE clay results for Jupiter place us well above our peers in terms of both grade and scale. What’s incredible is that these results are not isolated. They confirm consistent grades over 2000ppm TREO in broad widths of 20-30 metres in 96% of the holes and that is sitting within zones of around 60m over 1000 ppm TREO. Jupiter is shaping up to be an incredibly impressive project. Venture Minerals managing director Andrew Radonjic

Radonjic said further results were still pending for the company’s widely-spaced maiden resource drill program. It would also look to design future infill drilling in a bid to uncover more impressive grades.


Jupiter’s potential for throwing out long runs at high grades was presaged last month with a collection of attention-grabbing numbers from its previous work – the best being 32m at 1629ppm TREO from 22m including 16m at 2397ppm TREO and a further 2m going 7367ppm TREO from 36m.


The company says it is consistently encountering long intercepts at good grades, often 20m to 30m going more than 2000ppm TREO.


Moreover, it notes that samples report a high incidence of the valuable magnet rare earths that remain in strong demand for their importance in electric motors – and hence the growing electric vehicle (EV) industry – and renewable power generators, with grades of up to 3288ppm neodymium, 788ppm praseodymium, 674ppm dysprosium and 101ppm terbium.


Assays values for the deleterious radioactive elements thorium and uranium are low to negligible.


Management says it sees the latest results as being a strong validation of its geophysics that initially highlighted the unusual 40-square-kilometre alkaline intrusive Jupiter gravity anomaly. It has already plunged a revised 81 holes into it for 5074m of drilling, including 29 air-core (AC) holes for 1825m and 52 reverse-circulation (RC) holes for 3249m.


Drilling to date along two east-west and north-south lines, each transecting the entire anomaly across its centre, shows 23 holes grading in the range from 1500ppm to more than 3000ppm TREO, with a further 23 holes reporting grades in the 1000ppm-to-1500ppm range.


The Brothers project is well situated in regional WA, with the small rural town of Mt Magnet being the nearest settlement, just 80km to the north-east. It is also close to good infrastructure including sealed road access and a gas pipeline enroute to the major port of Geraldton, 300 km away.


Strategically, the project is also only about 250km from Iluka Resources’ Eneabba rare earths refinery, which has production slated to begin in 2025, and about 520km from Lynas Rare Earths’ concentrator facility that is operating at Mount Weld.


The project has gained the attention of a burgeoning market that is hungry for rare earths – and the next two tranches of results from Venture’s resource drilling will almost certainly be devoured with heightened interest as soon as they become public, particularly if the numbers to date prove to be a sign for future times.


Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: office@bullsnbears.com.au

6 views

Comments


Commenting has been turned off.
bottom of page