Huge WA rare earths hits keep coming for Venture

Venture Minerals has continued to nail the big drill hits, with results of up to 26,958 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO) and a 60m intersection grading 2014ppm at its Brothers project in Western Australia’s Mid West region.

The latest results from the company’s Jupiter clay-hosted prospect produced three of the four best intersections ever recorded at the project.

Management says it received the third and final batch of assays from the recently-completed stage-one drill program at its Brothers project, with standout results of 60m at 2014ppm TREO including 22m going 3024ppm and 39m at 2960ppm including 18m at 5206ppm. A further highlight was the high-grade 2m slice going 26,958ppm TREO from 38m.

Venture says many intersections between 24m and 50m thick hit rare earths grading more than 1300ppm TREO. The thickest recorded hit was 79m at 1805ppm TREO that included 14m at 6054ppm and 2m going 20,538ppm.

Management says the drill results validated the geophysical work it completed at the 40-square-kilometre project. It says 71 from a total of 78 drillholes hit mineralisation of more than 1000ppm TREO.

Encouragingly, the results maintained the magnet rare earth oxides (MREO) encountered at about 23 per cent, similar to results previously received from the phase-one program. An added positive was the continuation of low levels of uranium and thorium.

Jupiter has continued to generate more outstanding clay hosted REE intersections including the second, third and fourth-highest drill intersections at the project to date. With the final batch of assay results in from the Stage-One program, the Company now looks forward to receiving the first batch of assays results from the recently-completed Stage Two Program in the next 2 to 3 weeks.

The company says its project contains both magnet rare earths and heavy rare earths. The best results to date of the magnet rare earths came in at 3824ppm neodymium and 1232ppm praseodymium, with highly-valuable heavy rare earths readings of 674ppm dysprosium and up to 101ppm terbium.

Venture has also completed a phase-two drill program well ahead of schedule, with 246 holes drilled for 14,370m on a 500m-by-250m grid that will provide a level of data suitable to generate a maiden resource from Brothers.

The company will have options if it can build an economic resource at the project, as the ASX-listed Iluka Resources recently reached an agreement involving a risk-sharing arrangement with the Federal Government under its $2 billion Critical Minerals Facility to build the Eneabba rare earths refinery. It will sit about 250km south-west from Brothers and is expected to be production-ready next year.

Leading ASX-listed company Lynas Rare Earths also operates its Mt Weld concentrator about 520km to the east and it may also be suitable for processing the Brothers mineral resource if it is mined.

Venture has several other promising projects on its hands, with the Mount Lindsay tin-tungsten project in north-west Tasmania having one of the world’s biggest undeveloped deposits. It recently entered into a joint venture (JV) with a private company to explore the Iron Duke rare earths project that sits immediately south of Brothers.

Iron Duke features two historic shallow, broad, high-grade intersections of rare earths.

Venture appears to have found a “beauty” with the Brothers project, which seems to be shaping-up as a welcome addition to its family of prospective projects.

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