Chalice to probe Venture Minerals’ polymetallic play

Matt BirneySponsored

Tue, 27 April 2021 5:47PM

Matt Birney

Comparison of Chalice Mining’s Julimar and Venture Minerals’ South West projects’ aeromagnetic signatures and EM anomalies at the same scale. Credit: File

Stock market darling, Chalice Mining has kicked off a ground electromagnetic survey at Venture Minerals’ South West nickel-copper-PGE project about 240km south of Perth as part of the first stage of the pair’s recent joint venture agreement. Chalice has the right to earn up to a 70 per cent stake in Venture’s South West project by spending $3.7 million on exploration over four years.

Chalice has been the talk of the town since its exciting Gonneville nickel-copper-PGE discovery at the Julimar project about 70km north-east of Perth last year.

Its share price has taken off from a low of 16 cents in March 2020 to more than $7 and its market cap has rocketed to a whopping $2.38 billion. The company easily raised $110 million in a capital raise recently, with punters still looking to get exposure to Gonneville even at the new levels. Chalice has been drilling up a storm at Gonneville, where it has seven rigs carrying out a colossal 160,000-metre step-out and resource definition drilling blitz at the massive 1.8km by 0.9km Gonneville intrusion.

More than 87,000m of drilling has been completed at the growing deposit to date and Chalice anticipates even more drilling being required before tabling a maiden mineral resource estimate for Julimar late in the September quarter this year.

Perth-based Venture says Chalice’s initial 42 line-km program of ground EM surveying at the South West project will vector in on selected areas of the “Julimar look-alike magnetic anomaly” called the Thor target and other interpreted mafic-ultramafic intrusions. Any resultant anomalies are intended to be followed up with infill EM and then surface geochemical sampling in order to identify targets for possible drilling. Chalice’s EM program is expected to take about 4-6 weeks to complete, subject to weather conditions.

The Chalice exploration team has used its proprietary knowledge to select areas from Venture’s previous early-stage exploration work for follow-up ground EM, aiming to repeat its success at Julimar by targeting a very similar geological setting.

The two main prospects at Venture’s 256-square-kilometre South West project are Thor and Odin and Venture suggests both contain areas of potential nickel-copper-PGE prospectivity. According to the company, Thor overlies a 20km-long Julimar look-alike magnetic anomaly associated with chromium-rich rocks that it says are indicative of mafic-ultramafic intrusions. A prior airborne EM survey undertaken by Venture detected 13 highly conductive anomalies within the southern 6.5km of the magnetic anomaly, of which only two were tested in its early 2019 maiden round of drilling there.

One of the holes drilled at Thor returned a 2.4m intersection of massive sulphide mineralisation averaging 0.5 per cent copper, 0.05 per cent nickel, 0.04 per cent cobalt and anomalous gold and palladium.

At the nearby Odin prospect, Venture says the only hole drilled there encountered nickel and copper sulphide occurrences within a prospective mafic-ultramafic unit that extends over 10 strike kilometres.

The market will no doubt be watching Chalice’s activity on Venture’s ground closely for any indicators that it might be riding the same geological terrain as Gonneville.

https://thewest.com.au/business/public-companies/chalice-to-probe-venture-minerals-polymetallic-play-c-2699262