Tennant Minerals (ASX: TMS) has commenced a drilling campaign to further test and expand a new gold zone at the Bluebird deposit within its Barkly project in the Northern Territory, where the company has identified high-grade copper-gold mineralisation across a 500-metre strike length at depths of more than 250m.
The new program will generate drill core for test work to optimise the processing and recovery of gold, copper, silver, and bismuth within the mineral resource estimate of 1.58 million tonnes at 3% copper equivalent (CuEq) (1.3% copper, 1.04 grams per tonne gold, 2.67g/t silver and 839g/t bismuth) containing 47,400 tonnes CuEq (20,600t copper, 52,900 ounces gold, 135,600oz silver and 1326t bismuth).
The gold zone within Bluebird has been historically under-drilled and lies down plunge below the current open pit resource where there is potential for expansion.
Indicated and Inferred Resource
Bluebird hosts an Indicated resource of 1.07Mt at 3.43% CuEq (1.43% copper, 1.26g/t gold, 3.47g/t silver and 824g/t bismuth), and an Inferred amount of 510,000t at 2.08% CuEq (1.02% copper, 0.57g/t gold, 0.99g/t silver and 871g/t bismuth).
Previous drilling produced best gold and copper intersections of 30.5m at 6.8g/t gold and 6.2% copper from 153.6m including 17.8m at 11.5g/t gold and 5.2% copper, 24m at 11.8g/t gold and 0.66% copper from 161m including 5.7m at 49.3g/t gold and 0.74% copper, and 16.45m at 2.31g/t gold and 3.05% copper from 203.65m including 3.8m at 9.08g/t gold and 0.87% copper.
Tennant believes that better definition and expansion of this zone, as well as enhanced metallurgical recovery, may allow for an extension of the mineral resource below the current open pit depth limit of 180m.
Optimised Copper-Gold Recovery
The new campaign will include pre-collars and up to 400m of diamond tails, and will produce HQ drill core as a bulk sample for use in advanced metallurgical testing to enhance and optimise copper and gold recovery.
Tennant has previously conducted flotation testing on copper-rich, lower-gold grade core, which demonstrated copper recoveries of up to 90% into concentrate grading between 24% to 29% copper, along with as much as 79% recoveries in gold reporting to the copper concentrate.
Tennant expects to complete the new campaign within four weeks will then send samples to Perth for analysis.
Additional drilling to test potential extensions of the Bluebird discovery will be subject to approval of an expanded environmental management licence by the NT government.
