Hot on the heels of an air-core (AC) drilling program at its Jupiter rare earths target in Western Australia’s Mid West region, Venture Minerals (ASX: VMS) has kicked off a metallurgical program in a bid to upgrade its clay-hosted mineralisation.
The company this morning revealed details of the program where the initial phase of test work is designed to remove non-essential minerals such as coarse quartz, iron oxides and feldspar using standard physical separation techniques. The process is expected to lead to a significant upgrade to the clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation, paving the way for further extractive metallurgical test work.
Management believes a beneficiated product is also likely to lead to better project economics.
The metallurgy program has been designed on the back of a series of reviews of the mineralogical data undertaken by the company’s technical team. A broader metallurgical program is expected to play out in further stages of work across several independent laboratories.
Our work on the mineralogy has identified the opportunity to significantly upgrade the clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation by removing non-rare-earths minerals like quartz and iron oxides – and that’s before we conduct rare earth element extraction. We’re looking at the potential to create a beneficiated product by reducing the overall volume of material that we might process using cost-effective, industry-standard methods to remove waste. Beneficiation has the potential to substantially reduce the volume of material that is processed, which in turn could result in lower capital and operating costs for a future mining operation.
Venture Minerals Managing Director Philippa Leggat
Since joining the company in May, Leggat, has wasted little time in redefining its direction of travel, labelling the Jupiter deposit as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity driven by growing critical mineral demands. Having pocketed $3 million from the sale of the Riley iron ore mine in Tasmania and raising $7 million in fresh capital via a placement to existing shareholders and institutional funds Lion Select and Northstar, Venture now has $12 million in cash reserves to direct towards Jupiter and aggressively target a maiden resource by year’s end.
In order to complete the transformation into a single-focus company, the only assets still remaining outside of rare earths are its Tasmanian tin projects, which have the “for sale” sign hanging at their front gate.
The sprawling 40-square-kilometre Jupiter prospect, which is hosted within Venture’s broader Brothers project area, is poised to become a cornerstone of the company’s future mining operations. Following a 22,000m comprehensive drill-out, management is now focused on refining its approach to metallurgical processing.
Jupiter is 80km south-west of the WA town of Mount Magnet and has been delivering a raft of impressive drill results including 2m at 26,958 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO), an exceptional 60m at 2014ppm and a record-breaking 48m at 3025ppm.
The project benefits from excellent infrastructure including proximity to bitumen highways, a local labour force and the Port of Geraldton. The site is also within trucking distance of rare earths processing facilities.
With a maiden resource likely before the end of the year, metallurgical work underway and recovery testing not far behind, the next few months are likely to be busy ones for Venture.
A razor-sharp focus and a burgeoning cash balance are two of the essential ingredients needed to get a good project off the ground. It would appear that this company has both in spades.
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