As the historic Youanmi goldfields gets a new lease on life courtesy of a modern rush of gold explorers, Venus Metals is one ASX-listed company that is ahead of the pack with its portfolio of assets surrounding the old Youanmi mine playing host to a range of projects from resource stage to first pass exploration drilling.
Venus, along with its JV partner Rox Resources, is about to kick off an Xcite airborne electromagnetic survey, or “HEM” at the Penny West Deep South Project, where an aircore rig is currently churning through about 4,000 metres just 4 kilometres south of the historic Penny West mine that made Spectrum Metals famous recently after Ramelius made a $200m play for them.
The HEM survey can potentially detect areas of increased sulphides at depth. Sulphides are known to be strongly associated with gold mineralisation at the Penny West mine and the nearby Penny North deposit. both of which are located on the lucrative Penny West Shear zone.
Venus is hoping that the geophysical survey will throw up some compelling new targets that can be drilled at a later stage.
The aircore drilling at Penny West Deep South has been designed to investigate a multi-element soil anomaly and spans 800m by 500m.
According to Venus, this target has a similar geochemical signature to that found at its recent Sovereign gold discovery, located north of Penny West.
One drill hole at Sovereign intercepted 4 metres grading 7.02 grams per tonne gold from 24m and 5m at 2.41g/t gold from 60m in separate holes.
Venus also said that high-grade gold drill intercepts of up to 2m at an ounce to the tonne have been reported by Aldoro Resources, about 1km to the north of its Penny West Deep South target.
Elsewhere, Venus has just picked up a new tenement at “Penny East” from Beau Resources for just $30,000 plus GST. Penny East adjoins Venus’ and the Venus/Rox JV ground, which collectively now forms a prominent land position surrounding the old Youanmi and Penny West gold mines.
There is a lot going on at Youanmi for Venus at the moment and with a current mineral resource of 1.19 million ounces of gold and a suite of site infrastructure including a mothballed gold processing plant, there is not a lot standing in Venus’ way now.
Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting ? Contact : matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
