Fuelled by growing global demand, Venus Metals Corporation Limited (ASX:VMC) has refined its vanadium oxide resource estimate for the Youanmi venture in Western Australia to 134.73 million tonnes grading 0.34%.
The company revised the estimate for the open pit operation after completing additional infill drilling and analysis and mine mapping using Micromine 2018.5.
The leading exploration and 3D mine modelling software was used to plot information from:
- 139 recent reverse circulation (RC) holes at 5919 metres, drilled to a depth of 19 metres to 50 metres;
- data from 49 historical RC holes; and
- 11 diamond holes at 3268 metres, previously drilled at the site.
In all, 199 holes were modelled and the information imported into Micromine software for review and validation. That involved checking for duplicate collars, missing samples, down hole from-to interval consistency, overlapping samples, missing assays, missing down-hole information and missing or erroneous collar survey.
Resource estimation was also carried out in Micromine 2018.5 software, with ordinary kriging (OK) interpolation used based on parameters such as variography and drill hole spacing.
Managing Director of Venus Metals, Matthew Hogan, said the company was very pleased with the result and it justified their decision to proceed with a comprehensive drill-out of the vanadium project at Youanmi.
“As the world transitions into a low-carbon future it will require significantly more power storage capacity. Vanadium is a sustainable metal allowing unlimited storage life and capacity for clean energy as well as stronger, lighter and more resilient steels and alloys for infrastructure and transport,” he said.
Venus Metals has advised it will now proceed with metallurgical test work and scoping studies to rapidly advance the Youanmi vanadium oxide project.
To find out how Micromine 2018 can benefit your exploration and mine mapping activities, visit the Micromine product page.
To read Venus Metals technical quarterly update, see the news report.
