Venture Minerals has entered into a share purchase and sale agreement with Goldvalley Brown Stone, a subsidiary of private iron ore miner Gold Valley Group, regarding the sale of its Riley iron ore mine in Tasmania.
Venture Minerals has entered into a share purchase and sale agreement with Goldvalley Brown Stone, a subsidiary of private iron ore miner Gold Valley Group, regarding the sale of its Riley iron ore mine in Tasmania.
Venture’s wholly owned subsidiary, Venture Iron, is owner of the project.
Upon completion of the sale agreement – earmarked for July 8 – Gold Valley will pay Venture $3 million for 100 per cent of shares in Venture Iron.
Venture has already received $50,000 of this cash consideration package courtesy of a deposit.
Along with its decision to divest the Riley project, Philippa Leggat-led Venture told the market it would appoint an advisor in a bid to facilitate a sale process for its remaining Tasmania-based projects – in order to add value to its Jupiter rare earths project in Western Australia.
Over the past few years, Venture has been determining several ways to generate greater value for its shareholders.
One of these involved Riley, a project which had been on care and maintenance since 2021.
Venture appointed Argonaut PCF to undertake explore all avenues, including restarting or selling the project.
Ultimately, the rare earths junior also told the market it viewed diverting resources away from Jupiter to restart Riley as ‘detrimental’ to shareholder value.
In October last year, Venture also undertook an extensive in-depth review of both its corporate strategy and projects – an operation which also included a board renewal process.
Last month, Tim Lindley was appointed non-executive chair of Venture, while Ms Leggat was promoted to managing director. Andrew Radonjic also resigned from the company’s board.
"This capital injection will be used to advance our high-grade, clay-hosted rare earth project Jupiter,” Ms Leggat said.
“This also frees our team to focus their efforts on advancing Jupiter while eliminating the financial burden of maintaining the Riley project on care and maintenance.
“We thank the Tasmanian authorities for working with Venture for all these years.”
Venture closed trade on Monday down 4 per cent to 2.3 cents per share.
