Nearby REE finds show promise for Venus Metals at Mangaroon North
Venus Metals will start mapping and sampling at its WA project after data identified multiple priority targets.
Junior explorer Venus Metals (ASX: VMC) will embark on a mapping and sampling program across its Mangaroon North rare earth elements (REE) project in Western Australia next week after remote-sensed data revealed multiple priority targets.
The company’s four exploration licences lie adjacent to the Mangaroon-Yangibana REE mineralised zone with one abutting Hastings Technology Metals’ (ASX: HAS) Yangibana tenement, Dreadnought Resources’ (ASX: DRE) Yin tenement and Lanthanein Resources’ (ASX: LNR) landholding. Venus’ other three licences abut Dreadnought’s tenure.
Recent high-grade REE yields from exploration at these neighbouring projects add to the promise of Mangaroon North, which contains the same host lithologies as Yin and Yangibana.
Dreadnought’s latest drilling results confirmed thick, high-grade REE at the Yin prospect with notable assays of 26m at 1.31% total rare earth oxides (TREO) from 16m, including 8m at 2.55% TREO from 28m; and 7m at 2.84% TREO from 11m, including 5m at 3.49% TREO from 12m.
Venus managing director Matthew Hogan said the company is “extremely encouraged” by the recent REE exploration success in the region by Dreadnought.
He added that Venus looks forward to updating the market in due course regarding the multiple targets that has been identified through advanced remote-sensed data processing methods, including geology and regolith maps, ortho-images and radiometric data.
The company has scheduled a field program of mapping and sampling to begin in the second week of September to evaluate the multiple targets.
Venus said other reasons the Mangaroon North project is considered prospective for REE is due to linear and circular structures along major northwest-trending translithospheric faults, including the Edmund Fault, which intersect the company’s tenements. These faults are interpreted to have acted as pathways for carbonatitic or ferrocarbonatitic melts or brine-melts.
In addition, the presence of ironstones, and potassium, thorium and uranium anomalies were identified in all of Venus’ tenements.
Nearby exploration
Dreadnought plans to calculate a maiden JORC resource for Yin once the remaining assays from its recent 120-hole drilling program are at hand.
Meanwhile, Hastings received the final results from its Yangibana resource definition reverse circulation (RC) drilling program and said an updated mineral resource estimate is set for completion during this 2022 second half.
Last week at Lanthanein’s Lyons REE project, siteworks commenced for a maiden drilling program targeting “exceptional” high-grade REE results from rock chips at outcropping ironstones over 2.5km strike.