Why Tennant Minerals shares jumped 25% after the latest exploration update

Microcap explorer Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS) revealed its exploration team’s latest discovery of high-grade gold at the company’s Bluebird prospect on Wednesday. 

“This latest drill-hit from Bluebird is truly spectacular and includes a thick and high-grade gold zone of over 11 grams per tonne, as well as a massive copper-sulphide zone grading over 10 percent copper,” company chief Matthew Driscoll said. 

“Drilling is already planned to extend this remarkable new discovery, which lies under shallow cover to the east of the Tennant Creek Mineral Field.”

A note on grades 

To put Tennant’s latest results into context, it’s handy to have an idea of what grades we’re talking. 

High grade gold has concentrations of at least five grams of gold per tonne of ore (5g/t), according to investor information provider Undervalued Equity (UE). Many Australian projects boast grades of 4g/t, which are also considered high-grade. 

UE classifies high grade copper, meanwhile, as having concentrations above 2%. 

With Tennant reporting copper sulphide grades of concentrations up to 10%, it’s easy to see why the microcap’s share price jumped 25% in the first hour of trade. 

Tennant is reporting the following from Bluebird: 

• 30.5m @ 6.8g/t gold and 6.2% copper, including: 

  • 17.8m @ 11.5g/t gold and 5.2% copper, and 

  • 16.1m @ 10.5% copper 

Next steps 

The next stage of drilling will target shallow extensions of these mineralised areas of interest, given the high-grade results posted above. 

Those results effectively represent a westward expansion of the mineralised area of interest at Bluebird. 

“The extension of this very-high grade copper-gold zone to the west and to a shallower depth opens up potential for new drilling to deliver more spectacular intersections in this direction,” the company wrote on Wednesday.

Drilling will also test other previously logged priority targets along the 2.5km Bluebird-Perseverance Corridor, in other words, the pathway between two prospects on-site where first-stage evidence of potential further deposits has been collected. 

So wait. What’s Bluebird, again?

Bluebird is a copper and gold target part of the larger NT-based Barkly project. 

In November last year, the company extended the overall size of the prospect as extensional drilling found evidence mineralisation underfoot extends for further than previously thought. 

The copper and gold digger consistently turns up strong results, encouraging the company to retain its focus in that area of the tenement. 

Stage 2 drilling kicked off in October.

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