Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS) CEO, Vincent Algar
Lel Smits: Tennant Minerals is focused on its 100% owned Barkley project in the Northern Territory, where a review of historical drilling, geochemical data and gravity surveys has uncovered two high-priority copper gold targets, Babler and Wedge, located just kilometres from the high-grade Bluebird copper gold discovery. Joining me today is Tennant Minerals CEO Vincent Algar. Vince, welcome back to TSN.
Vincent Algar: Great to be back. Thanks, Lel.
Lel Smits: Now, you’ve just announced the identification of two large-scale golden copper targets, Babler and Wedge, just south of your Bluebird discovery. Can you walk us through what makes these targets so significant?
Vincent Algar: Look, today we announced these two exciting targets from our ongoing exploration of the larger Barkley project, as we call it, east of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. As followers of Tennant will already know, the company has drilled multiple intersections of high-grade copper and gold at its Bluebird project, about seven kilometres north of this particular opportunity at Babler.
So Babler is just to the south of that. The reason it’s of great interest is it represents an area of widespread gold and copper mineralisation identified in historical drilling. The important thing is that’s over an area of over a square kilometre, and some of the holes are about 500 metres apart.
So to find the levels of gold anomalism in rocks that are quite near the surface, over 500 metres apart, in a few holes, is actually really quite important. Things like this, geological anomalies like this, in rocks that have not been previously identified to host mineralisation in this area, is important. Because elsewhere in the world, these types of rocks host megadeposits.
And that’s what’s really become interesting to us. So for a junior company to come across widespread mineralisation, where megadeposits can be hosted in, is really, really important.
Lel Smits: Excellent. Now at Babler, you’ve highlighted historical drilling from the 1970s that identified gold over wide-spaced holes, some 500 metres apart. What do these results suggest? And also, can you outline why is this area now attracting fresh interest?
Vincent Algar: If you consider, let’s go back to the history, right? So historically, at the time in Tennant Creek, gold, when they drilled these holes, you can even see from the notes, they were not considered important because of two reasons. One, they were not high enough grade.
So remember, the deposits at the time in the Tennant Creek area being mined, there were tens of grams, 20, 30 gram tonne deposits of copper and gold. So when they intersected these lower grades, they ignored them. The second thing was they weren’t in the right rocks, according to the model that they were currently using.
So many of the deposits in the area that were being mined at the time were in these lower rocks. We call them the rocks in the floor, if you like, of these deposits. So what we found is, when we went back to look at Babler, the rocks are sitting in the rocks slightly above.
And that’s really important, the fact we have mineralisation in rocks that previously would have been ignored because they were not only the wrong grade, but they were also the wrong type. Now, when the gold price is where it is today, and we can re-look at things with a new lens of 2025, that opens up a whole new opportunity. As I said before, mega deposits elsewhere in the world in these rocks are possible.
So we should have a closer look at them. The Northern Territory of Chewbacca, some further excellent work by the Northern Territory Geological Survey, recently published, pointed to mineralisation in these particular rocks, these overlying rocks, if you like. And that’s what’s really got us interested.
We’ve looked at their work, we’ve seen that as a possibility, and we’ve started to pull this together with these old drilling results, which previously would have been literally sitting on the shelf and being ignored, which is a great opportunity for us.
Lel Smits: Absolutely, an excellent opportunity. Now, with wide-spaced RC drilling planned and a shared copper-gold processing facility being scoped, what are the next steps in advancing both the exploration and development of the Barkley Project?
Vincent Algar: So, firstly, we want to get onto Babler and Barkley with respect to refining the drill targets with geophysics. So we’ve got some good geophysical data. We’re going to use some new techniques to collect some new data over this particular area because of its particular geological setting. And then we’ll start to go in with a set of shallow holes, not too shallow, we want to make sure we get the most effective depth, which is a balance between cost and depth in most cases in terms of drilling cost, but intention to widen this area of mineralisation from its current scale to much wider.
In terms of our other work, Bluebird itself continues to be evaluated and moved towards the partnership with the Alliance partners for the development of the joint processing plant in the area for copper and gold. And all that will happen if this grows legs and becomes bigger, it can be part of that larger story.
Lel Smits: Great to hear. Well, thank you for the update from Tennant Minerals, Vince, and look forward to following your developments.
Vincent Algar: Thanks, Lel.
Ends