The maiden inferred resource, which comes 18 months after the discovery of the deposit, stands at 500 million tonnes at 1139 parts per million lithium for 3.03Mt of contained lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), at a 700pm lithium.

While Red Mountain Central hosts the bulk of the resource at 408Mt at 1031ppm lithium for 2.24Mt LCE, Red Mountain North is much higher grade with a resource of 91.6Mt at 1618ppm lithium for 790,000t of LCE, including a high-grade component of 47.9Mt at 2193ppm lithium for 560,000t of LCE at a 1300ppm lithium cut-off.

Speaking on a webinar yesterday, Venari executive director and CEO Matt Healy said the resource would be equivalent to a low-grade 10 million ounce gold deposit.

“On a contained lithium basis, the project actually ranks quite highly on the ASX,” he said.

“If you put all of the ASX-listed explorers and their lithium resources together, this is the sixth-largest lithium resource among those explorers – that’s ahead of Winsome Resources and Wildcat Resources on a contained lithium basis, so it’s quite a significant project.”

In terms of sedimentary-hosted lithium deposits, Red Mountain would be second behind fellow Nevada explorer Jindalee Lithium.

Despite the size of the resource and against a backdrop of surging lithium prices, Venari’s share price fell slightly after the news and its market capitalisation remains below A$25 million.

That compares with Jindalee’s market cap of around A$60 million and Wildcat’s market cap of just under A$500 million.

“I just don’t think the market’s quite discovered it yet,” Healy said.

Project advancing

Venari sees plenty of potential to grow the resource with drilling and high-grade surface samples sitting outside its boundary.

Red Mountain remains open along strike and at depth.

The company plans to release an updated exploration target later this month, which will form the basis of a three-pronged program focused on extensional, infill and discovery drilling.

Once the next round of drilling is planned, Venari will apply to the Bureau of Land Management for approval.

Approval for the two previous programs has been received within a week.

“In fact, drill rig availability is the tougher thing,” Healy said.

Also due this month is lithium carbonate test work.

“That’s really important, because not only will it demonstrate that we’re able to generate a product but also give us some indications about how pure that product is,” Healy said.

“Battery grade lithium carbonate is 99.5% lithium carbonate, but what’s equally as important, and perhaps more important, is your impurity characteristics.

“If you’ve got too much iron in there, that can cause some real problems, as can magnesium, so we’ll get that information and that’ll give a really good starting point on what the project can produce and what sort of demand that might have in the marketplace.”

Venari has already undertaken scoping-level metallurgical test work, which indicated lithium leachability of up to 98%.

“Having the mineral resource out now, it actually leverages all the early work that we’ve done,” Healy said.

“Now we’ve got our resource, we can say not only do we have something in the ground, but here’s all this evidence that we can get it out and that’s actually two steps ahead of any other junior that’s in a position where they’re putting out a resource at the moment.”

Venari is hoping to have a scoping study out by the end of the year, leveraging Red Mountain’s infrastructure benefits, the deposit’s favourable geometry and work completed to date.

“We believe this is going to have some fantastic economics,” Healy said. “We’re looking at going from maiden MRE to scoping study quickly”.

Geopolitical tailwinds

Despite all the noise coming out of the US on critical minerals, the US produces very little lithium domestically.

The Smackover project in Arkansas and Thacker Pass and Rhyolite Ridge projects in Nevada are under development and are expected to add around 75,000t per annum of LCE by 2030.

The Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology forecasts US domestic battery production capacity to reach 864 gigawatt hours by 2030, which could generate 432,000-600,000tpa of LCE demand.

The US government has already invested in Lithium Americas, which is building Thacker Pass.

Critical minerals have been on the agenda this week in Washington D.C. with US Vice President JD Vance proposing price floors and a trading bloc to counter China’s dominance.

Healy sees the opportunity for Venari to receive government grants and assistance to develop Red Mountain.

“We haven’t been able to do much to date because you basically won’t get a meeting with anyone from the Department of Energy or Department of Defense until you’ve got a mineral resource,” he said.

“Of course, that’s changed so that’s on the agenda. We’ll certainly be reaching out to those departments.”