Junior explorer Venturex Resources (ASX:VXR) has made some interesting new discoveries at its Breakers prospect in Western Australia, with sampling returning high grades of up to 36.7 per cent copper.

Generally anything over 6 per cent copper is considered high-grade.

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Shares witnessed positive movement on Wednesday morning, edging up 2.3 per cent to 22c.

Venturex has confirmed the find as a volcanogenic massive sulphide, or VMS, deposit.

VMS deposits are a type of large metal sulphide ore deposit, mainly copper and zinc, that range in size from 4 million to 25 million tonnes.

Though there are some huge ones around like Peak Creek in Canada that host as much as 150 million tonnes.

Venturex is ramping exploration up at its Sulphur Springs copper and zinc project in WA’s Pilbara.

Surface exposure of Breakers cuprite-malachite gossan. Pic: Venturex.
Surface exposure of Breakers cuprite-malachite gossan. Pic: Venturex.

“One of our key objectives is to find additional VMS deposits along the 27km long Panorama Trend which could be processed by a centrally located plant at Sulphur Springs,” managing director AJ Saverimutto said.

“VMS deposits generally occur in clusters within a favourable target horizon, and the Panorama Trend has seen minimal exploration outside of the known resources.”

Venturex has already explored two of the eight to 10 deposits it thinks it has in the Pilbara and has a 17-million-tonne inventory so far.

Geologist Luke Gibson told Stockhead that Venturex was aiming to eventually have a large operation similar to the Golden Grove mine in Western Australia or the Rosebery mine in Tasmania, which started out “smallish” but grew to be large, long-life mines.

“Both those projects have been in production for over 40 years,” he said.

 

Here’s what else is going on in base metals today:

 

Alicanto Minerals (ASX:AQI)has set its sights on a couple of high-grade VMS projects in Sweden. The company is buying the Oxberg and Naverberg projects, which are located in a major mining district that hosts “world-class” producing mines. Alicanto has six months to sink $500,000 into exploration on the projects and decide whether it will exercise the option to acquire them.

New World Cobalt (ASX:NWC) is tapping investors for $2.2m to fund maiden exploration programs at its new high-grade VMS copper, gold and zinc project in the US. The rights issue is being done at 1c per share and is fully underwritten by Cygnet Capital.

Metals X (ASX:MLX)has mapped out its “reset” plan for the Nifty copper mine in the East Pilbara region of WA. The company is hoping to reach a phase-one throughput rate of 2 million tonnes per annum during the March 2020 quarter to produce about 28,000 tonnes per annum of copper in concentrate. Metals X wants to increase that to 35,000 tonnes per annum of copper in concentrate in the March 2021 quarter.

Sipa Resources (ASX:SRI) shares went for a bit of a run this morning after the junior explorer told investors it had intersected “significant new mineralisation” in five holes at its Akelikongo nickel and copper joint venture with Rio Tinto. Shares climbed as much as 14.3 per cent to an intra-day high of 0.8c before settling back level with Tuesday’s closing price.