Venture partner Chalice marks out new nickel-copper targets at South West

Chalice Mining has identified two new nickel-copper-PGE targets at Venture’s South West project after completing an auger soil geochemistry program.

The new targets are located over interpreted ultramafic rocks within untested airborne electromagnetic anomalies that are coincident with magnetic highs at the 20km Julimar lookalike Thor trend.

Notably, geochemical results in the new targets have stronger coincidental magmatic indicator metals, including nickel, copper, cobalt, palladium, platinum and gold, than the area covered by the recent ground EM that they are not a part of.

Venture Minerals (ASX:VMS) adds that Chalice has now met its expenditure requirement of $1.2m to earn a 51% stake in the South West project and now has the option to spend a further $2.5m over the next two years to increase its stake to 70%.

“The company is very pleased with the results of Chalice’s auger geochemistry program, successfully delivering two new nickel-copper-PGE targets associated with interpreted ultramafic rocks and coincidental with magnetic and airborne electromagnetic highs at Thor,” managing director Andrew Radonjic said.

More to explore

Radonjic added that there are several kilometres of strike on the Thor magnetic trend that have yet to see any geochemical surveying or EM work.

“Venture believes that Chalice’s latest exploration results have successfully identified a new and prospective ultramafic rock sequence that runs parallel to the Thor target and has never been explored,” he noted.

This area is marked by historical mapping and occurrences of talc, which is typically a product of the metamorphism of ultramafic rocks.

Should Chalice elect to continue exploration in the South West project, the next stage of work will include following up on the auger geochemical program results with ground EM and infill geochemical sampling to prepare the generated targets for potential drill testing.

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.