Venture Minerals’ maiden drilling probe at its Greater Brothers project in Western Australia’s Mid West region has landed a swag of thick, high-grade rare earths that included an impressive 45m averaging 1455 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO) from 70m downhole.
The headline intercept included a 15m hit coming in at 2105ppm. Other notable results included 19m running at 1931ppm TREO from 55m, which included a high-grade 5m core peaking at 3380ppm TREO, in addition to a 30m section grading 1982ppm TREO from 35m that included a 15m run chipping in 2672ppm TREO.
Importantly, management says the value of the highly-coveted magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO) tip the scales up to 23 per cent of the TREO grade. And interestingly, many of the holes from the 40-hole program finished in mineralisation, which Venture says alludes to the potential to extend the lucrative horizon deeper into the bedrock.
The reconnaissance program has tested just a fifth of the company’s Greater Brothers project area that is nestled between Mullewa and the Mt Magnet mining hub. The company says the prospective geology hosting the newly-discovered high-grade rare earths hits extends through much of its tenure, providing valuable targets to point the drill rig at in future programs.
Venture Minerals managing director Andrew Radonjic said: “Our maiden drilling program at Brothers has delivered a potential world-class clay hosted REE discovery of significant scale with thicker and higher grade results than the vast majority of our peers in Australia. The Greater Brothers Project is well located in regional Western Australia with excellent access to infrastructure, and therefore presents an exciting development opportunity for the Company.”
The Greater Brothers project area is made up of the company’s 100 per cent-owned Brothers tenure that it snatched up in April and the recently-inked Iron Duke joint venture (JV) with Sentinel Exploration. Venture has the chance to earn-in 51 per cent of the Iron Duke project by spending $75,000 on the project in the first year and $250,000 within two years.
Brothers is adjacent to the company’s existing Vulcan project, which recently gave up high-grade rare earths of up to 125,165ppm in rock-chip sampling.
Another April acquisition for Venture was the Bandy project, which comprises 809 square kilometres of land about 250km south-east of Mount Magnet.
The rare earths mineral hunt is gathering momentum in Australia, with a raft of junior explorers in hot pursuit of the in-vogue metals. Just last month, fellow WA junior explorer OD6 Metals released a maiden mineral resource of 344 million tonnes at 1308 ppm TREO for its flagship Splinter Rock project near Esperance, pushing its share price up nearly 45 per cent to touch 32.5 cents.
While Venture takes stock of its new discovery, it is adding to its growing cache of rare earths prospective tenure, pegging a further 75sq km adjacent to the Brothers project and increasing its footprint in the area to a colossal 1165sq km.
The company now wants to fast-track its discovery, with planning underway and approvals being sought to push ahead with additional drilling to extend the intriguing find. Metallurgical testwork is also slated to try and determine how much of the clay-hosted mineralisation is ionic-based and suitable for low-cost, sustainable extraction.
With a string of thick, high-grade rare earths hits rivalling many of its peers rolling in from its first foray with the drillbit in WA’s Mid West, Venture looks set for a decent ride on the rare earths wave.
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By Helen Barling
