Venus Metals Corporation has a new four-kilometre mineralised slice of WA goldfields to hunt following the results from a massive 426-hole, 22 kilometre aircore drilling program at its 50 per cent owned Youanmi joint venture project.
The news comes just weeks after Venus and joint venture partner and operator Rox Resources tabled a whopping 1.34 million ounce resource upgrade for Youanmi, taking the company’s total gold resource in WA to the magical 3 million ounce mark.
The resource upgrade equates to a significant 156 per cent increase following a seven-month period of intensive infill and extensional diamond drilling for approximately 35,000 metres at the Youanmi Deeps deposit.
The company said aircore drilling intersected regolith gold anomalism associated with interpreted northwest trending structures over the 4 kms of strike.
The partners reported 4m at 2.37 grams per tonne gold from 68m within a broader mineralised zone of 16m at 0.91 g/t gold from 56m intersected close to the Youanmi Shear Zone and within a 1.5km long strong anomaly.
The drill spacing was 80m on 400m-800m spaced lines and the aircore holes were drilled to depths ranging from 2m to 99m at an average depth of approximately 53m.
A strike of more than 50km at the Youanmi Shear Zone remains largely untested by historic drilling, according to the partners.
Management says the aircore results provide the first insight into the gold potential beneath the transported cover widely occurring through much of the Youanmi belt.
Previous explorers had conducted broad spaced rotary air blast, or “RAB” exploration drilling along the belt, however according to the joint venture most of the historical RAB holes are vertical, shallow and often did not penetrate beneath transported cover.
In contrast, the recent aircore holes penetrated well beyond the depths of historical RAB drilling, effectively testing the in-situ regolith.
The company says this demonstrates historical RAB drilling would have been largely ineffective as an exploration tool in these areas.
Rox Resources Managing Director, Alex Passmore said: “Since entering the VMC JV (i.e. Youanmi regional ground) we have recognised the broader Youanmi belt has a history of high-grade discoveries in differing geological settings (e.g. Youanmi, Penny West, Golden Crown, Commonwealth) but remains substantially underexplored.”
“We are extremely pleased to have identified some significant mineralised corridors and zones of gold anomalism beneath the widespread transported cover.”
“Target area 1 to the south of Youanmi mine has returned persistent gold anomalism over 4km in an area featuring a series of NW trending structures and will be followed up in the near term.”
A follow up aircore and RC drilling along strike and downdip from the newly identified mineralisation with additional infill drilling planned between anomalies is in the works, according to management.
The $26m ASX-listed Venus has a number of other projects where it is in the driving seat, flipping its non-operated position in the Youanmi JV.
It operates its 90 per cent-owned Henderson lithium gold and nickel JV, in the eastern WA goldfields where it is exploring five exploration licences covering approximately 800 square kilometres along the central section of the Mt Ida/Ularring Greenstone Belt, 775km northwest of Perth.
Historical geological mapping and recent fieldwork by Venus identified pegmatite dykes cross-cutting the greenstone sequence at the Snake Hill and Emerald South Prospects. Interestingly, the company also recently initiated a review into the hard-rock lithium potential of the Henderson tenements.
Venus is currently waiting on assay results from a soil sampling program from its 100 per cent-owned Bridgetown East project where it is testing for copper, nickel, palladium and platinum in order to plan follow up, high-powered geophysical surveys over the ‘Julimar look-a-like’ prospect.
It completed a geochemical soil survey on a recently granted tenement immediately north and along strike from a strong aeromagnetic and electromagnetic anomaly previously identified in the south of WA.
The company also plans to focus on its acreage adjacent to leases associated with the Greenbushes lithium mine as it looks at potential mineralised zones along interpreted structures and dykes that extend into Venus’ tenement.
The early signs all seem to be going in the right direction for Venus and its joint venture partner Rox Resources. Should the drill bit confirm the potential of the project the duo could well be off to the races.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
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