Tennant Minerals sees more bonanza grade gold potential at NT Barkly Project

Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS) shares have fallen flat during lunchtime trade, but only after shaking off morning gains as company geotechs announce the fresh discovery of new magnetic targets at the company’s NT Barkly project. 

Normally, magnetic targets on their own would not be means for a significant encouragement of bullish sentiment, but after Tennant hit bonanza grade gold on-site earlier this month, the company is confident in replicating its success. 

The bonanza grade gold was extracted from the Bluebird prospect, which is part of the larger Barkly acreage. 

Bluebird is joined by another target less than 2km away, called Perseverance—and Perseverance, it turns out, has a large magnetic anomaly beneath existing shallow mining works. 

For this reason, it is the Perseverance target that raised the eyebrows of Tennant’s geotech team.

What is ‘Bonanza grade?’ 

Investor information provider Undervalued Equity states concentrations of gold in ore over 5 grams per tonne (5g/t) are considered high grade. Many Oz projects with grades of 4g/t are also accepted as high grade. 

Once you get past 34g/t of gold in a sample, you have what is called ‘bonanza grade,’ and for reasons which are probably obvious, the target is something of a gold standard for exploration entities (no pun intended.) 

For context, earlier this month, Tennant Minerals reported the following from drilling results at Bluebird: 

• 63m @ 2.1% Copper and 4.6g/t gold from 153m depth 

  • 40.0m @ 3.0% copper and 7.3g/t gold from 155m 

  • 27.5m @ 3.6% copper and 10g/t gold from 160m 

  • 07.0m @ 1.4% copper and 38.5g/t gold from 181m

Why does Tennant think Perseverance has bonanza grades?

Tenant Minerals’ geotech team are basing their confidence in the commercial potential of Perseverance due to the results of historical drilling from 1995, when former operators Posgold published a final exploration licence report in February.

In short: Posgold drilling hit pockets of gold with grades up to 50g/t, easily exceeding the cutoff qualification for bonanza grade gold. 

Whether or not Tennant can replicate Posgold’s 1990s success remains to be seen, but the company does note it is now viewing the Bluebird corridor as a ‘Bluebird-Perseverance’ target area of interest. 

Perseverance is located 1.5km along strike from Bluebird. 

Decent cash position 

At the end of June, Tennant had $4.7m in cash. 

A surface look at performance reveals the following: 

• One month returns up 38.7% 

• One year returns up 79.1% 

• Year to date (YTD) performance up 22.8% 

Tennant Minerals' three month charts show a recent surge in positive sentiment