Date: Dec 19, 2018
Venus Metals, known for its wide ranging portfolio of gold and battery-associated metals exploration projects in Western Australia, recently announced the completion of a resource definition drilling program at the Youanmi vanadium oxide project based in South of Sandstone in Western Australia. About 6000 meters of shallow RC drilling was completed on a tight grid spacing up to 400 meter wide and over nearly 2 km of strike on the strongly oxidized ore system. This was being done for preparing to update the estimate of mineral resource for the project that presently rests at 110.6 million tonnes grading 0.3 percent vanadium in the classification category that is the lower confidence inferred segment. Venus Metals would be able to convert a major part of the inferred resource into an indicated and measured oxide resource with the help of the detailed drill out. The oxide resource is then used for optimizing ore reserves and could result in initializing detailed economic studies.
The drilling has delivered sample that is greater than 100 tonnes for advancing the metallurgical test work studies on the vanadium oxide ores from the Youanmi project. The company had also unveiled spurring exploratory metallurgical work on oxidized ore composites that consist of vanadium recoveries, 70 percent of which are obtained from simple acid leach test. The test proved beneficial as it managed to suck out most of the valuable cobalt, nickel, and copper credits. Venus aims to complete a potential study for treating 5 million tonnes per annum of oxidized ore at grades of 0.3 percent or higher vanadium pentoxide, at Youanmi.