• Venture Minerals’ new aircore drill program to define high-grade zones at Jupiter
  • Priority will be northern margin zones with >5000ppm TREO intersections
  • Company will also carry out regional 70-hole aircore drill program at broader Brothers project

 

Special Report: Venture Minerals has started a new drill program that seeks to further define high-grade mineralised zones at its flagship Jupiter rare earths discovery within the Brothers project in WA.

The new program will close down drill spacing at the recently modelled zones of high-grade mineralisation, where previous drilling had returned broad intersections of >3000 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO), at both the northern and central zones to a minimum spacing of 250m by 250m.

In particular, Venture Minerals (ASX:VMS) will focus on recently discovered zones on the northern margin that returned >5000ppm TREO intersections at Jupiter, which is close to Lynas Rare Earths’ (ASX:LYC) Mt Weld concentrator and Iluka Resources’ (ASX:ILU) Eneabba refinery.

Since receiving a 48m intersection at 3025ppm TREO from the first batch of assays from its Stage 1 resource definition drill program – at that time considered to be highest-grade clay hosted REE intersection for an Australian project – the company has steadily received further encouraging and highly consistent results.

Notable examples include an 8m intersection grading 5716ppm TREO and a recent record-breaking 57m hit at 3430ppm TREO.

“Following a plethora of impressive drill results throughout the entire 40km2 Jupiter project, we are excited to focus our attention on further defining the substantial high-grade zones identified within the system,” managing director Philippa Leggat said.

“The completed resource drilling has provided us with valuable data for our maiden resource estimate and highlighted sizeable zones of high-grade mineralisation.

“Our new drilling program will be focussed on these priority targets as well as testing some of the regional targets in the broader Brothers project surrounding Jupiter.”

 

Drilling and other activity

VMS noted that the drill program of between 10,000m and 15,000m of aircore drilling will reduce the drill spacing in targeted high-grade trends to 250m by 250m.

Where required, this drill spacing will be reduced to assist the company in further defining zones of impressively high-grade mineralisation.

The company is also working towards a maiden resource estimate for Jupiter and is finalising its comprehensive metallurgical program.

Additionally, it has committed to a regional drill program of 70 reconnaissance aircore holes to test priority geophysical and geological targets within the broader Brothers REE surrounding project.

Previous drilling focused on satellite REE clay targets, adjacent to Jupiter, had returned intersections up to 45m at 1455ppm TREO including 15m at 2105ppm TREO (BRAC009) and 19m at 1931ppm TREO including 5m at 3380ppm TREO.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Venture Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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