"I had an idea to list a small company which had only one tenement at the time and create shareholder value by acquiring attractive assets throughout Western Australia and retaining a tight capital structure," Hogan said.

"We currently have approximately 45 million shares on issue and two JORC resources, which is not a bad effort for four years work."

Today, Venus Metals has two development projects focused on iron ore and diamonds and three "super projects" targeting elephant-style iron oxide-copper-gold deposits in structurally favourable settings.

The development projects are currently at the centre of Venus' world and comprise the Yalgoo iron ore project, in WA's emerging Mid West iron ore province, and the Argyle-Smoke Creek alluvial diamond project, adjacent to the primary deposit that hosts Rio Tinto's Argyle mine.

In September 2011, Venus commissioned a geological consultancy to produce an updated preliminary resource report for Smoke Creek. The report estimated an inferred resource over 12 granted prospecting licences of 21.5 million tonnes at an average grade of 28 carats per hundred tonnes for 6Mct using a cut-off grade of 10ct/hundred tonnes, highlighting the project's potential as a new source of genuine, Kimberley Process-compliant diamonds.

Venus has commenced a 10,000t bulk sampling program on the granted licences, with excavation and plant construction proceeding at Smoke Creek.

Hogan believes the value of the Argyle project will lie in its ability to yield the revered pink diamond, which is substantially more valuable than its white counterpart.

"Pink diamonds have been recovered in small amounts from countries such as South Africa, India, Brazil and Indonesia but Argyle Diamonds is certainly the primary source," he said.

"Rio Tinto controls 95 per cent of the world's pink production although there have been other occurrences, such as at Normandy Mining's Bow River deposit [mined out] in the 1990s which also runs off Argyle's AK1 pipe. Our tenements contain the same diamondiferous gravels to those already mined by Rio at upper Smoke Creek and, like Normandy, we expect to also have a healthy distribution of pink diamonds, which is a very rare opportunity, especially for a junior."

Earlier this year, Venus secured the purchase of a containerised modular diamond processing plant for use at Smoke Creek. The plant comprises a scrubbing and screening module, a 10t/hour dense medium separation module and a dual X-ray ore sorter and recovery machine.

The plant was constructed in South Africa and has recently been relocated to Smoke Creek for the bulk sampling program.

The sampling will produce a parcel of diamonds that will be used to determine the value and distribution of the stones and potentially lead to a mining operation by 2013.

Hogan and his team are also keeping a focus on their most advanced project at Yalgoo, 200 kilometres east of Geraldton, where pre-feasibility study results released in August indicated a technically viable and financially robust project capable of a net present value in excess of $2 billion.

The study was based on the production of 7.5Mt per annum of exportable magnetite concentrate over 15 years and at a grade of more than 68% iron.

Hogan said Venus would only proceed to bankable feasibility once it had received certainty on the future of the government's $6 billion-plus Oakajee project, which involves the construction of a deepwater port near Geraldton and an associated rail network to service the needs of the region's magnetite iron ore industry.

"A lot of aspiring miners in the Mid West are relying on Oakajee as the region's alternative to the Port of Geraldton, which is fully subscribed for bulk material export now and into the future," Hogan said.

"For now, it is a waiting game and we are closely monitoring the developments."

Located 80km north of Gindalbie Metals' world-class Karara iron ore project, the $1.2 billion Yalgoo development consists of seven exploration licences totalling 208sq.km of the Yilgarn Craton Archaean banded iron formation.

Newly interpreted mineralised zones surrounding the main Bilberatha zone saw the project's JORC-compliant magnetite resource increase from 645.6Mt to 698.1Mt, with an indicated resource of 311.2Mt and inferred resource of 386.9Mt.

"Everything so far with Yalgoo has progressed to plan to give us the beginnings of what we believe will be a key project in WA's Mid West, provided Oakajee gets the green light," Hogan said.

Venus is facing different challenges at its third main area of focus, the Telfer region of the Canning Basin, where the junior has a string of exploration tenements with major targets under the cover of the Great Sandy Desert.

"We like to explore in locations that other small companies do not go to and the Canning Basin is one of those areas," Hogan said.

"We are targeting large iron oxide-copper-gold targets under 300 metres of sand cover - it is deep drilling, there is no outcropping and you are working purely off geophysics.

"It is expensive and challenging and not for the faint-hearted."

Venus' current exploration drilling program at the Radi Hills prospect, part of the Telfer "super project", encountered drilling difficulties and was terminated.

A different drilling procedure will now be adopted which will penetrate the overlying sediments and make way for diamond drilling of the basement rocks in the near future.

"We believe there are many major deposits still to be discovered in this region," Hogan said.

"We are very confident that our proven track record of discoveries will come to fruition and that we will be able to soon reward our shareholders for their patience and support."

*A version of this report, first published in the October 2011 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Venus Metals