Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS), General Manager Chris Ramsay
Lel Smits: Tennant Minerals is preparing for the next phase of work at its Bluebird high-grade copper-gold bismuth discovery following confirmation that mineralisation extends beyond the current open-pit mineral resource. With $2.8 million raised, the company is now advancing step-out drilling, geological modelling and metallurgical studies aimed at defining the broader opportunity and progressing development pathways. I’m joined today by Tennant Minerals General Manager Chris Ramsey to discuss what comes next for Bluebird and how the latest work is moving the project toward development.
Chris, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Chris Ramsay: Pleasure to be back, Lel. Thank you.
We’ve had a great trip out into the field recently, so I’ve recently been viewing the projects and the information on the ground, so we’re very, very pleased to say that was a great trip and look forward to discussing that and a few other items with you now.
Lel Smits: Fantastic. And when it does come to Bluebird, you’re now extending beyond the current mineral resource.
Can you outline how the latest drilling, gravity, magnetic, also geochemical data sets, are changing your understanding of the overall system that you’re encountering?
Chris Ramsay: Well, as you know, and as our listeners will know, we’re trying to put together a picture from pieces of the puzzle. Now, this information that we’ve been collecting and re-interrogating always enhances that picture. We’re especially lucky at Bluebird in the sense that the altered and brecciated ironstone is a strong geophysical target, or we get a strong geophysical response.
So we’ve got these remote sensing techniques that are on our side, and with the information we’ve collected from our drilling, we’ve now got this great predictive exploration model that we can use to extend Bluebird all going well and look for new Bluebirds in the district. And you would have seen our recent result earlier in the year, a diamond drilling result, which was nearly 20m at over 10g per tonne Gold equivalent. And there was some very high-grade Copper and Gold and bismuth numbers throughout there, including nearly 50g per tonne Gold, 10% Copper and nearly 12% bismuth.
So we’re really happy with those numbers. The drill core will feed into metallurgical studies so that we can enhance the processing pathway. But what it told us spatially was that the high-grade zone continues below the resource envelope.
So the key change here is that our understanding is moving from a single discovery through the testing the scale of continuity in the broader system, so we can extend it down depth and we can extend it through the corridor. Excellent. And in terms of really that bigger opportunity, the next drilling will target the gravity-high ironstone extensions, also potential repeats along the Bluebird Perseverance Corridor.
Lel Smits: Chris, can you give us an idea specifically, really, what you’re looking at to prove this next phase of drilling?
Chris Ramsay: Yes, yes. So I’ve discussed the modelling that we’re using. So Bluebird is not closed off at depth and down plunge.
So our modelling work shows us that whilst we know it’s open, that it’s also a high-quality target. So either extensions or structural repeats in that zone. So we’re pretty confident and excited about getting that program together.
And we’re now also applying this geophysical, predictive geophysical model across the corridor, the gravity, the magnetics and the surface geochem over areas that are actually this thin cover. So, you know, without that exposure at the surface, it could have easily been missed in the past. And indeed, we know Bluebird wasn’t exposed at the surface.
It was a blind discovery as well. So, you know, so we’re really looking for, you know, continuity of the high-grade chute, extending our open pit resource into an underground extension, making sure we define these high-grade lenses and then looking for repeats throughout the belt. So yeah, that’s what we’re, that’s what we’ll put our recent raise, that’s how we’ll put our recent raise to work.
Lel Smits: And Chris, with additional metallurgical work being considered, also the Tennant Creek Alliance Processing Plant Pre-feasibility Study progressing, how are you thinking about the pathway from exploration success towards perhaps a potential development and production decision?
Chris Ramsay: Yeah, thanks. Ultimately, these discoveries need to be translated into a technically and economically viable mining and processing opportunity. So that’s our goal once we’ve made a discovery.
So of course, we hope that we can make the resource bigger with our step-out drilling. We’ll progress our geological modelling and our test work to expand our underground resource below our existing open-cut resource. We’re revisiting mining studies to just to test the viability.
Of course, this will feed into our participation in the Tennant Creek Copper Processing Alliance, which is progressing really well. The regional processing hub makes all the sense that you can imagine with a central facility. It gives us economies of scale.
It spreads the capital and operating costs across the individual deposits. And of course, it eliminates the need for us to build, each of us to build our own deposit. So my job in the information to these studies, we push them through to a conclusion so that we can look at developing a processing facility together.
And we want it to be a realistic project case. So increase the size of the resource and analyse it from a mining and development perspective and just bring this value to our shareholders.
Lel Smits: Absolutely. Chris, thank you for the update from Tennant Minerals.
Chris Ramsay: Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Ends