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Venturing across the commodities

ith Venture Minerals Ltd trading at mineralisation at ORRC003.
Wtwo-year share price highs in late In the meantime, the first three holes
November, it was a good time for Paydirt from the Orcus prospect were being
to catch up with the company’s managing analysed to confirm the mineralisation
director Andrew Radonjic. observed.
Radonjic signalled that first shipment “This now means we have already
from the Riley DSO iron ore project on identified 120m of VMS-style sulphide
Tasmania’s north-west coast was poised mineralisation open at depth on the first
for March, and while that is a long-await- line of drilling at Orcus. It bodes well
ed positive step for the company, there for the next line of drilling 300m to the
is also interest brewing in its exploration south across the strongest part of the EM
portfolio. anomaly, and the highest-grade copper-
After an initial drill hole at Orcus in- in-soil results recorded at the prospect,”
tersected 33m of disseminated to semi- Radonjic said.
massive sulphides with copper and zinc Having exploration success at Orcus
at Golden Grove North (VMS), results may just be the fillip for Venture’s wider
from the next two holes also included portfolio of assets to be appreciated.
disseminated to semi-massive sul- While Orcus is along strike of the
phides with copper and zinc over 23m famed Golden Grove VMS mine, near
Yalgoo in Western Aus-
tralia’s Mid West, Venture
also finds itself in terrain
bearing semblance to
the geological setting of
Chalice Gold Mines Ltd’s
Julimar nickel-copper-
PGE project, near Perth. Andrew Radonjic
The potential of Ven-
ture’s South West pro-
ject, near Bridgetown targets at the Kulin gold project, within
and Manjimup, to host a the South West Terrane of the Yilgarn
Julimar look-a-like has Archean Craton which hosts the likes of
been recognised by Chal- Boddington, there is ample opportunity
ice which has committed in Venture’s stable for a game-changing
$3.7 million to the South discovery.
West project to earn a Radonjic said having a diverse port-
70% interest, with Ven- folio made it a “little hard to market” the
ture maintaining a 30% company at times.
stake upon completion of “There are half a dozen opportunities
expenditure. within the company to produce success-
“I think the Chalice JV ful news flow, so each project does have
is something that has an influence. It is a bit of a blessing and
flown under the radar on curse at the same time; to understand
Maiden drilling at Thor, within the South West project, the basis that they got the full valuation can be a complicated
intersected 2.4m of massive sulphide averaging 0.5% copper another big leg up since beast,” he said.
with 0.05% nickel, 0.04% cobalt and anomalous gold and we did the JV, but I don’t “Once we get Riley up, we’ll have this
palladium. Chalice is earning into Venture’s project think Venture has had any base load $30 million valuation as an ex-
reaction to that,” Radonjic plorer that is producing, and we’ll get that
said. producer’s premium in our stock. Then
(ORRC002) and 69m (ORRC003), re- “Chalice’s stock is $3.50/share and the upside will all be in the exploration,
spectively. when we did the JV it was $1/share. I think.”
ORRC003 is more than 120m down- Certainly, the valuations on Julimar DSO iron ore production from Riley
dip of the historic intersection of 22m @ have increased dramatically and on the has been estimated to deliver $31 million
0.76 g/t gold, 0.64% copper and 1.3% back of an EM target their stock goes cash for Venture over a period of about
zinc from 38m (bottom of hole), includ- up; we identified a 6km-long EM target two years, which could help fund a small
ing 10m @ 1 g/t, 0.74% copper and 2.1% two years ago. Had we done the JV one underground tin mining operation at its
zinc in sulphides from 50m to bottom of month ago or around that [Julimar dis- flagship Mt Lindsay project in Tasmania.
hole. covery] announcement our stock would “We are on track for commissioning
Venture planned to shift the RC rig have gone bursting along.” [Riley] in late January and then hopefully
onto the stronger EM response and co- The market’s appreciation for explora- by mid-March will make our first ship-
incidental highest-grade soil anomaly at tion success appears to be continuing ment,” Radonjic said.
the heart of Orcus, as it looked to con- and with Golden Grove North showing
duct diamond drilling targeting deeper promising signs and drilling testing new – Mark Andrews

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT DeCeMBeR 2020 - JaNUaRY 2021 Page 103