Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Venari Minerals NL (ASX:VMS), Executive Director & CEO, Matt Healy
Lel Smits: Venari Minerals, formerly Astute Metals, is advancing dual exploration programs across Nevada in the USA, accelerating its Red Mountain Lithium project and expanding discovery potential at its Needles Gold-Silver project. Following exceptional lithium intercepts across successive drilling campaigns at Red Mountain, Venari has now lodged an Exploration Plan of Operations, an EPO, with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management allowing for a fast-tracked expansion of exploration under the Trump administration’s expedited permitting provisions for critical minerals. I’m joined today by Venari Minerals Executive Director and CEO Matt Healy to discuss this major milestone and the company’s outlook heading into the year-end.
Matt, welcome to the Stock Network.
Matt Healy: Yeah, thanks, Lel. Thanks for having me.
Lel Smits: Now, Venari has completed its latest RC drilling campaign at Red Mountain, confirming widespread lithium mineralization and prompting the filing of an Exploration Plan of Operations EPO for up to 100 acres of disturbance under fast-tracking permitting provisions. How does this EPO submission position Venari to fast-track Red Mountain’s development towards a maiden mineral resource estimate and future feasibility level studies?
Matt Healy: Yeah, great question, Lel. Well, the maiden resource is basically locked in now.
We’re really just waiting on the assay results from our recent drilling campaign that you mentioned, and then we plug those results into the mineral resource estimate and see what comes out the other end. But in terms of, I guess generally, when you’re exploring on federal land in the U.S., you’ve got five acres of disturbance that you can utilize at the notice level. But once you’ve used that up, you need to get more disturbance allowance.
And because we’ve had such successful drilling at Red Mountain, that means that we’ve permitted 30 drill pads per project, and we’ve drilled all of those. So we’re coming close to our five-acre limit. But the good news is the Trump administration has fast-track permitting for critical minerals projects, and so that’s what we’ve applied for.
We’ve applied for, as you said, another 100 acres, and that will basically enable the company to provide resource updates. So that’s increasing the JORC category, expansion. Basically, it’s ultimately, it’s enough disturbance to take the project right through to feasibility.
Lel Smits: Excellent. Certainly big developments there, and RC Drilling at Needles tested six priority targets within a large epithermal system with assays pending and strong geological indicators emerging. What are the early signs from Needles? And also, how could the upcoming assay results shape the next phase of exploration?
Matt Healy: Yeah, like you said, the assays we’re still waiting on and unfortunately, the U.S. labs are very busy at the moment. We would have hoped to have those results by now, but it looks like we’ll start to get them in about a week. The results that we can see so far is we identified lots of quartz fading and oxidised sulphides in the drilling, and that’s exactly the signs that you want to see when you’re looking for epithermal gold and silver mineralisation.
So we’re pretty buoyed by those initial observations and the geological logging. But as I said, the results start coming through in about a week, and we’ll get them for probably trailing in for over two weeks thereafter. And to answer your question, well, a gold or silver hit in one or more of these holes will provide some direct focus of where to do follow-up drilling.
But also, we’ve got some other data that’s been coming in. We’ve got some soil sample results, geophysical survey results, and that’ll help design and to shape our thinking about where to do our next drilling at this high-potential project.
Lel Smits: Excellent and against that backdrop, you’ve had a $5.5M placement completed during the quarter, strengthening the company’s capacity to deliver this expanded Nevada program alongside the company’s rebrand to Benare Minerals, meaning to hunt. How do these milestones position Benare to accelerate exploration across your very fast-growing Lithium and Gold-Silver portfolio?
Matt Healy: Yeah, well, the company’s very well placed, Lel. As you said, a $5.5M raise was conducted in the quarter.
But also, we followed that up with an SPP. It was planned to be only $0.5M, but we had over $1M worth of interest, and so that’s highly successful. So we’re very well placed to follow up on any results that we get out of this needles drilling, and to continue devising the Red Mountain Lithium project after we’ve put out this maiden resource in less than 2-months’ time.
Lel Smits: Matt, it’s been a pleasure to speak with you and hear all of those updates from Benare Minerals. I look forward to keeping updated with the latest developments. Thanks, Lel.
Matt Healy: Good to talk to you.
Ends