Coal billionaire ups Venus stake amid shining WA | Australian Markets

Venus Metals Corporation’s largest shareholder Chris Wallin has tightened his grip on the company’s register after a Friday submitting revealed the Queensland coal billionaire had snapped up an further 1.9 million shares on market to carry his holding to 24.38 per cent.

Under company guidelines, shareholders can own up to 19.9 per cent of an Australian company earlier than triggering a obligatory takeover offer. However, a creep provision within these guidelines permits the identical investor to build up a additional 3 per cent of the register each six months without having to make a bid.

Given that Wallin has invoked the creep guidelines to take his holding in Venus to nearly 25 per cent, it could appear truthful to counsel he could not wish to stop there.

At the centre of the investor’s eager curiosity seems to be the company’s 55-million shareholding in ASX-listed Rox Resources, which is price $19.5 million in in the present day’s market and nearly mirrors Venus’ own $21 million market capitalisation.

Add to that a 1 per cent royalty over Rox’s Youanmi gold mine – independently valued at $9.5 million a yr in the past when gold was US$2000 (A$3100) an ounce – it’s not onerous to see why Wallin could also be on the buy tack. With gold now pushing A$5200 ($8000) an ounce, the royalty alone might hand Venus a profitable money stream for years to come back.

The prized property fell into Venus’ lap in 2023, when it offered its 30 per cent stake in Youanmi to Rox in exchange for 110 million shares. Youanmi hosts 16.2 million tonnes useful resource going 4.4 grams per tonne g/t for two.3 million ounces.

Venus handed half its Rox shares on to its shareholders in specie, giving Wallin an prompt 2.4 per cent slice of Rox. He has since constructed on that beachhead and now sits on a healthy 8.6 per cent of the Rox register.

Venus additional set tongues wagging in the present day by unveiling a set of cracking metallurgical outcomes from its Bellchambers gold deposit, 23 kilometres southwest of Sandstone in Western Australia’s Gascoyne-Murchison area.

It says the exceptional outcomes pushed gold recoveries as high as 99 per cent, suggesting its ore is each extremely treatable and appropriate for a low-risk, standard processing pathway.

The check work, seven reverse circulation drill gap intervals, was carried out by ALS Global in Perth beneath the watchful eye of SB Process Consultancy.

To gauge Bellchambers’ potential, this system trialled ore efficiency beneath cyanide leaching situations to see how a lot gold may very well be hauled out via a easy gravity restoration course of. The checks additionally measured how a lot reagent could be required to course of recent rocks.

Across each the recent sulphide materials and weathered oxides samples, recoveries got here in between 90 per cent and 99 per cent. The oxide materials leached so quickly that more than 90 per cent of its gold was launched within three hours and nearly all within eight hours.

Gravity recoveries additionally confirmed a sturdy upside, with oxides usually outperforming recent rock. In easy phrases, this implies there’s good scope to seize a sizeable slug of gold up entrance earlier than the ore even hits the cyanide circuit – a helpful option that might cut Venus’ processing prices and bolster its returns.

Adding to the nice news, reagent utilization stayed inside industry-friendly ranges. The oxides barely required any cyanide and lime during processing. While the recent sulphides had been a little hungrier, the reagent stage they required nonetheless fell within manageable tips.

Venus says the outcomes show the free milling ore at Bellchambers is about as easy because it will get. It is non-refractory, largely void of nasty parts and succesful of yielding high recoveries with run-of-the-mill gravity and leach circuits.

The company believes that optimisation work to tweak grind measurement, cyanide concentrations and pH control might nudge recoveries even larger and cut back reagent use additional.

Venus lately up to date the gold useful resource at Bellchambers to 30,800 ounces at 1.27grams per tonne (g/t). At a 0.5g/t cut-off, the tally now contains 8800 ounces within the measured class, 17,900 ounces in indicated and 4500 ounces in inferred.

As half of the replace, Venus additionally ran the numbers on a pit design utilizing a $4500 per ounce gold price. At the identical 0.5g/t cut-off, the optimised pit crunched out 19,130 ounces. While the measured slice held regular at 8730 ounces, the general grade stepped up 7 per cent to a more healthy 1.36g/t.

Venus final month took steps to hurry up its open-pit development plans by securing a mining lease over the deposit. The company can also be deep in talks with neighbour Rox over a potential farm-gate ore sale or toll remedy deal to course of the ore.

Rox, which runs the Youanmi gold project, is edging nearer in the direction of a closing investment choice on a standalone operation and plant construction.

Should Rox pull the set off, Venus might paint a masterstroke by way of a straight ore sale or processing tie-up, which might see it dodge bankrolling its own plant, fast-track early money stream and wipe away a hefty capex invoice.

And if the gold price retains buzzing alongside above $3300 an ounce, Bellchambers might shortly form up as a tidy little earner with lots to leverage for additional exploration success.

Outside of Bellchambers, Venus holds a swag of different WA exploration performs throughout gold, base metals, lithium, titanium and vanadium.

With a billionaire backer quietly upping his stake, a useful resource improve within the bag, cracking metallurgy at Bellchambers and the prospect of a low-cost processing deal with Rox, Venus Metals is in a candy spot.

Add in in the present day’s lofty gold price and a portfolio brimming with WA exploration performs, and the company seems to be well-placed to show its current momentum into a golden run.

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