Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS), General Manager of Geology Chris Ramsay
Lel Smits: Chris, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Chris Ramsay: Pleasure, Lel, good to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, a new diamond drilling program is now underway at Bluebird. How will drilling beneath the open pit resource and into the downplunge extensions help to confirm continuity and also expand the high-grade gold zone?
Chris Ramsay: Yes, well, you’ll be well aware of the way the gold market is going at the moment. We have a 53,000-ounce gold resource that we brought to the market recently, and the new drilling will help better define the distribution of that gold. It’s associated with the copper, but it’s not well correlated, so we need that information.
And of course, the recoverability is the second aspect of this drilling. So we’ll generate a large sample for new metallurgical test work, and that’ll be processed earlier in the new year. To optimise for gold recovery in this improving gold market.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And when it comes to previous drilling, it’s returned some strong results. How do these results really support confidence in deeper targeting? And also, what do they reveal about the system’s possible scale?
Chris Ramsay: That’s right, well, some of our previous results, we’ve got up to 12g per tonne over 24m, and 3g per tonne over 14m, amongst a lot of other good gold results. So we’ve got nearly a gram per tonne in the large resource. Now, the pit optimisation we used only a few months ago.
Of course, gold was US$2,800 at that time. So with a 50% improvement in gold price in such a short period of time, we’ll be looking at generating potentially new resources, review the modelling, and this drilling work will help us extend our knowledge of the gold model and improve it, and also improve our recoverability once again. It’s important that we de-risk any future development with this work.
Lel Smits: Absolutely. And Chris, finally, with Bluebird’s maiden open pit resource announced and deeper drilling tested, testing deeper extensions, what are the key catalysts that investors should watch as Tenant Minerals advances the Buckley project?
Chris Ramsay: Well, we’ll certainly be sharing the results of the drilling. All going well, we should know what we’ve seen later this month.
We’ll certainly be able to share lab results towards the end of January, all going well, depending on backlogs, etc. And then we’ll ship off the metallurgical sample shortly after that. So towards the middle of the first quarter or the end of the first quarter, we should be able to share those improved gold recovery results.
Now, in our original MET test work, we had exceptionally high copper recovery and very good gold recovery in the 70s. So having a gold-focused sample to optimise that part of the processing facility will be key information. During the first quarter.
Lel Smits: Excellent. And that is not very far away. So I look forward to keeping up to date with all those developments and all the best till then.
Chris Ramsay: Thank you. Yes, we’ll be busy over this period and we’ll share our news when we can.
Ends