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ARTEMIS RESOURCES LIMITED (ARV) - Unlocking Mineral Wealth: Executive Director George Ventouras on High-Grade Lithium Discoveries, Gold Exploration Successes, and Strategic Joint Ventures

August 15, 2024 • Andrew Musgrave

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Ready to uncover the latest breakthroughs in mineral exploration? Listen as we chat with George Ventouras, the Executive Director of Artemis Resources, who shares some riveting updates from their multi-faceted projects across Western Australia. Get an exclusive look into the Karratha Lithium Project, where George reveals the impressive high-grade lithium assays and the significance of coarse spodumene crystals found at the Mount Marie prospect. Discover why these findings are generating excitement and what the next exploration steps entail. 

But that's not all. George also delves into Artemis Resources' ongoing gold exploration within the Pilbara tenements, particularly at the Nickol River Hill South and Orpheus prospects. Learn about the remarkable rock chip sample results that have surfaced and how they align with the company's historic focus on gold. Plus, George discusses Artemis' 49% stake in the Osborne Lithium Project through a strategic joint venture with GreenTech Metals. Don't miss out on George's insights into the future of Artemis Resources and how their diverse mineral projects are shaping up.

Andrew Musgrave:

Welcome to another episode of ASX Briefs, and today I'm joined by George Ventouras, the Executive Director of Artemis Resources, a company that's focused on exploring and developing a range of mineral projects across Western Australia, with a particular emphasis on gold, copper and lithium. George, thanks for joining me today and welcome to the ASX Briefs podcast.

George Ventouras:

Thanks

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, if we can start off with some recent developments at Artemis. So your latest quarterly activities report mentioned significant high-grade lithium assays from the Karratha Lithium Project, so can you just share more about those findings and what they mean for the project?

George Ventouras:

Yeah, the lithium project that we've got. We've got a couple of prospects named Mount Marie and Osborne East, and the Mount Marie prospect, which is our most compelling prospect at this time, is really quite exciting. What we've seen in the ground reconnaissance we've done, we're seeing very high rock chip assay results and, interestingly, those results are probably the closest in the region to Azure Minerals. So we believe that Azure hit a high of 4.87% lithium oxide on a rock chip in their early days of exploration and what we're finding is 4.67 and what we're finding is 4.67 at our Mount Marie prospect. So that's a really exciting development for us.

George Ventouras:

The consistency of those rock chips are high. So that's advantageous and more importantly, or just as important, rather, the crystals of spodumene which hold the lithium are very big and coarse and the processors do like that style of mineralisation over other styles because it's easy to process. So you know, as a total project's concern, we're really quite excited about what we're seeing, that's outcropping in the early stages and then, beyond that, it's up to us to do the further work across the tenements to find out how far this reaches. So it's a really good start, some really good numbers, some really good rocks, but, as I say it's only the start and we're looking forward to the next phase of the exploration.

Andrew Musgrave:

And in addition to lithium, the company has been actively exploring gold targets within your Pilbara tenements. So can you provide us with more details on the recent discoveries at the Nickol River Hill South and Sing-Six prospects?

George Ventouras:

Yeah, look, I think Artemis has been on the ASX for a number of years I think 10 or 15 in total and really gold is in the Artemis DNA. It started with projects in gold in the in the west Pilbara. It had over 70 tenements, uh, and it's something that we really want to continue with. And the tenements that we do have in the portfolio are very, very prospective for gold mineralization and, as you pointed out, particularly Nickol River Hill South. It's a really interesting prospect. It sits along what we're calling the Orpheus trend, which includes the Orpheus prospect, and we're hitting some really interesting numbers.

George Ventouras:

So, Nickol River Hill South, we got some rock chip samples at near on 7 grams per tonne of gold and you know 86 grams of silver, 10% copper, so really high numbers. Orpheus in historic rock chip sampling had 23 grams of gold per tonne. So they're good numbers, good starting points. But we believe that the tenement contains more gold mineralisation and what we're seeing in follow-up work that we've done is seemingly proving that. So it's again a really exciting time for us on the gold side. The gold price is really interesting at the moment. There's a lot of narrative around gold and the market, so it's certainly something that we will be pursuing quite feverishly, as we continue our exploration work, not just in that part of the tenement but certainly another part of the tournaments that we've got.

Andrew Musgrave:

The company also has a 49% stake in the Osborne lithium project alongside GreenTech Metals, so how has this joint venture been progressing and what are your strategic goals for this partnership moving forward?

George Ventouras:

Yeah, I probably should point out that Green Tech was spun out of Artemis and it was spun out to be a pure battery metals play. It's got a really interesting copper project. It's got some nickel, which I know is not the flavour of the month at the moment, but that will come back. But we've got this joint venture tenement, where we do have lithium, as you say, and we've got some good numbers, some good geology.

George Ventouras:

Up until now most of the work that we've done has been in ground reconnaissance and just trying to work out the halo of mineralisation and where it extends across the tenement itself. So we've mapped pretty much all of it. Now we know where all the potential lithium mineralisation will be. We've got heritage and ethnographic clearances pretty much done, and what that means is that opens a pathway for drilling. So in the not too distant future, the aim would be to firm up some targets, design some drill programs and put some holes in the ground to see what we can find. I mean, as I say, the lithium market's a little bit off at the moment, but there's a lot of narrative about when it will come back. Not if so, we know that the project will be around. It's a big area. It's a big mineralised system across all those tenements, so we know it's got potential and we just need to do that work to discover how big it is.

Andrew Musgrave:

And you've also hinted at plans to expand exploration at the Carlow Castle gold copper cobalt Project. So can you shed some light on what investors can expect from this project?

George Ventouras:

Yeah, it's a really interesting starting resource. I guess for lack of a better description, Andrew it's high grade. There's some copper and cobalt in there, so it's a polymetallic deposit and it's interesting, Artemis has had historical highs of share price and market cap off the back of the gold nugget story and we're trying to distance ourselves from that at the moment, because what we're seeing now is not nuggets in the ground, but we're seeing gold in hard rock and what that means for us in the exploration team is that we're getting very close to the source of where this gold comes from. It's always good to find nuggets and it's always good to see that in the rocks, which is obviously very exciting, but we're more intent on trying to find out where this stuff comes from.

George Ventouras:

It comes from the source and we're looking for the source and we believe and we're fortunate that, you know, not too far to the east we've got De Grey Mining and their massive Hemi deposit and, because of the style of mineralisation and the way that's set out, people are looking at their projects a bit differently and what we're seeing at Carlow or the Carlow Tenement is something similar-ish where we believe we have the potential for multiple pits very close together. So whilst we're interested in growing Carlo and the resource that's contained there, we're sort of more interested in trying to find out how many Carlows we can find in that tenement. We've got some interesting prospects. They're only two or three km's away from the Carlow project itself, so we're quite excited about what the prospectivity is. So we'll be doing doing some work to try and find out and ascertain if we've got indeed something like that where there's multiple potential Carlows and we're doing some groundwork now and hopefully there's some releases coming out that we'll talk to that soon.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and a few months ago you completed a capital raise of just under $3 million. So how are you looking to allocate those funds?

George Ventouras:

Yeah, that was a great raise and well supported over subscribe. So what we'll be doing is splitting that between the lithium and the gold. They're two bona fide projects so we need to spend work and time on both of those. So what we'll be doing is firming up ground reconnaissance, which involves more rock chip sampling, more soil sampling again to really map out exactly what we've got on both sides of the commodity coin. And once we've mapped it, then we'll be looking to do, ultimately, some drilling. We've got a co-funded drilling program at Lulu Creek which the government's put some money up to explore that project. So the clearances are through on that. Hopefully we'll be able to drill in the not too distant future. So the market should expect some good activity going on and that's where the money will go. We don't spend money on the ground, we're not exploring, so we need to do that. We've told the market we're doing that and that's what we'll do.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, and just to wrap things up, what are some of the key goals you're looking to achieve in the next 12 months that shareholders can look forward to?

George Ventouras:

Well, I guess I'll break it down into two sides, Andrew, which is probably easier.

George Ventouras:

So on the lithium, what we're looking at doing is both on the joint venture tournament and our 100% owned ground to complete the mapping and the ground reconnaissance.

George Ventouras:

So we know exactly where the potential mineralisation is and some of this stuff's undercover so we can't see it. So we need to adjust our techniques to just try and track how far these pegmatite swarms extend. So we'll be doing that and then ultimately some drilling on the on the lithium side and then on the gold side, as I mentioned before, we'll be trying to delineate potential additional Crlow type projects, do a whole lot more of ground reconnaissance and map our tenements completely. So we know exactly what's going on. I mean, in our tenements we've got a lot of structures, faults and shear zones and all sorts of funky things going on and we know that these structures and these big structures, they provide the potential for fluid pathways and this is where the gold mineralisation should be. So hopefully, with a bit of work, that bit of ground recon and ultimately some drilling, you know the next 12 months will bring some nice-looking results to market and hopefully the market likes it.

Andrew Musgrave:

Okay, George, thanks for your time today. It's been great to get an update on the company's projects and we look forward to further updates from Artemis Resources in the upcoming months.

George Ventouras:

Oh, thanks, Andrew. It's great to talk to you and great to be here.

Andrew Musgrave:

That concludes this episode of ASX Briefs. Don't forget to subscribe and we look forward to catching you on our next episode.