company profile venturex resources

VENTURING TO - PRODUCTION

With big deposits, low development cost and exploration upside, this company is sitting pretty for growth in forthcoming years.

ERTH-based Venturex “All the basic services such Evelyn deposit; a prospect south of Resources is in control of the as roads, power, gas, water [and] Whim Creek. A small (but high-grade largest volcanogenic massive accommodation village are in place.” and open-pittable) copper-zinc- sulfide (VMS) resources in From a development cost resource was delineated, but it didn’t PWestern Australia’s region. perspective, this substantially provide the critical mass required to With an overall resource base of reduces capital requirements when support a significant development. 590,000 tonnes of copper equivalent, the decision is made to move into This led to discussions with the company has enough confidence in production. There is a crusher in Straits Resources (now a strategic the scope of its operation to push ahead place, which is expected to be suitable shareholder) and the purchase of with a bankable feasibility study. with refurbishment, and Venturex has the Whim Creek copper mine 35 “The overall game plan of the identified sites for the mill and float kilometres to the north of Evelyn, company is to develop a centralised circuit. which came with a significant open- processing facility at Whim Creek, A scoping study of the pittable copper-zinc sulfide resource where we will treat open pit ores Whim Creek site and pre-feasibilty plus infrastructure. from the local area and higher-grade study at Sulphur Springs indicates “When that was added it gave underground ores from Sulphur pre-development capital in the range us the scale and grade to pursue a Springs,” managing director Tim of $135-150 million. development, so we conducted a Sugden told RESOURCESTOCKS. “And that is for everything; it scoping study on that basis and came Venturex controls five significant includes the process plant, mine up with a viable production plan, but VMS deposits, including the two development capital, haul roads and it wasn’t large enough nor had the largest known deposits in the Pilbara working capital,” Sugden confirmed. longevity we were looking for in an – Sulphur Springs and Mons Cupri. “It’s very much a complete ‘up and operation,” Sugden said. Most of the 590,000t resource running’ cost.” Venturex then ran the ruler over base is copper, with zinc being the The bankable feasibility study the larger Sulphur Springs copper- secondary metal, together with lead, should be completed by the end of this zinc deposit, and completed the and gold. year. purchase from CBH Resources in Along with the size and grade of The advances made by Venturex February 2011. the deposits, location is another factor since it first entered the Pilbara have “The addition of the high grade working in the company’s favour. been extraordinary. Turning away ore at Sulphur Springs gives us “At Whim Creek there is from its original gold focus in Brazil a significant scale to pursue a an established minesite with the company has positioned itself to development – essentially doubling infrastructure both within and around be an Australian leader in VMS. the scale of a standalone Whim Creek the site,” Sugden said. Venturex started off by drilling the development,” Sugden said. “The beauty of it is that the cost of development is not substantially higher by increasing the scale, the “We have a nice large resource, we’ve got margins are better and the life of the a high-grade reserve that will support operation increases to around ten years on reserves alone. the operation for up to ten years and on “From the development decision top of that there’s an enormous amount it will be a 15-month construction period.” of exploration potential.” This puts commissioning in mid- tim sugden 2013, with 2014 being the first full venturex resources year of production. But that’s not the end of Venturex’s VMS story. The upside potential at its land position is

112 AUGUST 2011 RESOURCESTOCKS driving a massive exploration push by the company. “We have a nice large resource, we’ve got a high-grade reserve that will support the operation for up to ten years and on top of that there’s an enormous amount of exploration potential,” Sugden said. There are four main areas where the company will focus its effort. The first one is the Whim Creek site and the area to the south of the Mons Cupri orebody. “We feel there’s great potential for additional pods of copper-zinc mineralisation that is not exposed at surface,” Sugden said. “But we don’t have to drill down very deep, because the stratigraphy is quite flat lying, so it’s fairly straightforward to test near surface geophysical and stratigraphic targets.” Drilling of these areas will be a major focus in the next six months, running concurrently with completion of the BFS. The second growth area is Salt Creek, 17km north of Whim Creek Further afield, there are still the Whim Creek venturex where Venturex has identified Brazilian gold assets in the company copper significant high grade zinc-lead and playbook. Sugden said Venturex’s mineralisation resources copper systems. operations in the area came about as in diamond drill at a glance “Along strike and at depth of “something of an accident”. core those VMS systems there’s enormous “In response to the GFC, we felt $A potential for duplications.” the best way forward was to invest in CODE: VXR The third area is Sulphur Springs gold exploration.” Sugden said. 0.15 itself. Venturex acquired an existing “There’s a very large, single pod Brazilian gold explorer, but soon after 0.10 of mineralisation which is close to 20 the transaction was completed, the million tonnes,” Sugden said. Pilbara VMS story started to unfold 0.05 “If you look anywhere in the world through exploration success. where there are large pods of massive Brazil has been a quiet story for 6 months ending June 22, 2011 sulfide mineralisation of the scale of the company, but it’s also been quietly Sulphur Springs, there are other pods building. nearby. The potential for additional “We have been acquiring a lot of Head Office Suite 3 pods of mineralisation forming a exploration ground in some of the Level 1, 127 Cambridge Street cluster around Sulphur Springs is very more exciting gold districts in Brazil, West Leederville WA 6007 high. with a big focus on the emerging Australia Venturex will be doing step-out Tapajos region,” Sugden said. Ph: +61 8 6389 7400 drilling to test targets directly around “They are in the vicinity of Fax: +61 8 9463 7836 Sulphur Springs. Sugden said there large, multi-million ounce systems. Email: were great targets lined up, such as We’ve got very similar geology; [email protected] the Bledisloe with 17m at 0.5% copper there’s a lot of garimpeiro workings Web: www.venturexresources.com intersection. in alluvials, along with adits and Directors “If you’ve got copper then you’re shafts developed by the artisanal Anthony Kiernan, Tim Sugden, more likely to be in a more peripheral miners.” Michael Mulroney, Allan Trench, part of the VMS system, so we’re Rock chip and auger testing has Anthony Reilly quite excited about testing around the commenced, and an aircore drilling Bledisloe target. We could easily find program has recently started at the Market Capitalisation the next large system there.” Rio Pombo prospect. $A94.59 million (at press time) The fourth area is around Liberty- “We’ve worked hard to get the Indee, where exploration first started ground positions, we’ve just started Quoted shares on issue for the company. the drilling and we’re in the right 1,087,243,000 “We’ve already got one significant address,” Sugden said. Major Shareholders discovery at Evelyn and there’s still So, with a clear and easy path Regent Pacific Group 25.92% a lot of gossans along strike to test,” to copper-zinc production and Straits Resources 9.45% Sugden said. “We’ve also got a couple the potential for a gold premium, Tim Sugden 3.68% of anomalous RC results which we Venturex stock will soar in Argonaut Ltd (including AFM want to follow up on.” forthcoming years. – Blake Wilshaw Perseus) 4.95%

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