Venture on WA copper hunt at Golden Grove North

Venture Minerals is chasing down both copper and zinc sulphides at its Golden Grove North project in WA, with the budding developer kicking off diamond drilling at the prospect. The program is following up on a quiver of targets generated from the company’s maiden exploration program over the prospect which included drill intercepts of 1.3 per cent copper, 6.1 per cent zinc and 22 grams per tonne silver.

The company is also following up on array of electromagnetic, or “EM” targets generated via recent geophysical surveys which indicate that base metal mineralisation may extend along more than 5 kilometres of strike.

Venture Minerals Managing Director, Andrew Radonjic said: “The much anticipated second phase of drilling at the Company’s flagship exploration asset Golden Grove North has begun. With the maiden drill program at Kulin completed and now waiting for assays, Venture’s Exploration Team will switch focus to following up some very exciting drill intersections at Orcus and several strong EM conductors within the Golden Grove North VMS Target Zone. “

“The Company’s Western Australian assets continue to deliver exciting exploration opportunities whilst the Riley Iron Ore Mine Development Team gets on with building the Wet Screening Plant.”

The Golden Grove North project is located approximately 450km north-east of Perth in Murchison Mineral Field of Western Australia. However, more importantly, it is located in the very heart of elephant country, with the company’s tenure positioned a mere 10km north of EMR Capital’s tier one Golden Grove Copper-Zinc mine.

The Golden Grove mine is a world-class volcanogenic massive sulphide, “VMS” deposit. The ore system was originally discovered in the early 1970s with initial exploration focused on the near-surface copper and gold mineralisation, which returned tantalising concentrations of the metals but seemingly failed to make the grade required for a move to mining.

A bold, deep drilling program in the 1980s changed that scenario after it unearthed the deeper potential of the rich ore system, with the mine moving into production in the 1989. Since that time, the operation has played host to a chain of new discoveries along 12km of strike, with mining now exploiting the base metal loads to depths of more than 1,200 metres below surface.

Presently, Golden Grove boasts resources of more than  29 million tonnes of copper ore and 22Mt of zinc ores, which delivering a projected mine life of more than 12 years, with discovery continuing to grow the EMR’s resource inventory – a worthy target for Venture’s exploration program just to the north of the coveted mine.

Venture’s Golden Grove North project covers the northern strike extensions of the Golden Grove mine stratigraphy. It covers over 25km of the critical contact between the mafic volcanics and the overlying volcanogenic sediments, leaving ample room to make a significant discovery.

Interestingly, previous exploration over the Golden Grove North project area appears to have followed in the footsteps of the earlier workers at Golden Grove itself and stopped short of testing the depths of the VMS system, despite a wealth of near surface anomalism.

Historical exploration over the Golden Grove North tenure has returned rock chips grading up to 9.4 grams per tonne gold and 8 per cent copper, whilst shallow drilling has returned assays of up to 8m at 2.1 g/t gold from only 6m below surface – a potential glimpse of what lies beneath.

Subsequent drilling by Venture at the Orcus discovery also returned encouraging base metal intercepts include 5m at 1.3 per cent zinc, 0.54 per cent copper and 7 g/t silver, which includes 1m at 6.1 per cent zinc, 1.3 per cent copper and 22 g/t silver from only 59m down-hole. These intercepts provide a tantalising target for ongoing drilling, with down-hole EM having identified deeper conductors with the mineral system.

The company is now testing this host of deep EM targets with diamond drilling. The targets extend along more than 5km of strike, from Orcus in the north to the Vulcan prospect in the south, with drilling expected to continue over the coming weeks.

Whilst it is still early days in Venture’s Golden Grove North project, the target is beginning to show the first buds of an interesting base metal discovery and  with the company also developing an iron ore mine in Tasmania, in addition to exploring a range of targets in WA, punters can look forward to a solid flow of news in the weeks ahead.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au