Top End explorers Tennant Minerals (ASX: TMS), Emmerson Resources (ASX: ERM) and CuFe Limited (ASX: CUF) are marching forward with plans to process their respective deposits using a shared facility in the Northern Territory’s Tennant Creek region.
The three firms formed an alliance late last year to evaluate the viability of a multi-user facility to process copper, gold and critical mineral deposits from their respective regional projects.
They see immediate benefits in their “stronger together” approach for themselves, the Barkly region and the Territory from re-establishing copper mining and processing.
The companies’ in-house technical personnel and external consultants have been gathering data for an upcoming scoping study to determine the best pathway to develop a shared processing facility. The alliance will move towards developing a pre-feasibility-study, if the scoping study delivers an expected positive outcome.
The alliance team will rigorously evaluate the process plant location options, underground and open pit optimisations, mine design and scheduling and review the metallurgical test work and process plant flow sheet design and sizing.
The companies will also need to consider further factors such as environmental permits and approvals, mine scheduling and required power, water, transport and accommodation infrastructure.
The teams have reviewed how best to share resources across the impressive collection of assets to reduce both capital and operational costs.
CuFe is also working towards a resource update for the company’s Orlando and Gecko deposits, while efforts are underway to develop the initial mineralisation models for Tennant’s Bluebird deposit and Emmerson’s Hermitage and Jasper Hills deposits.
All three companies have put in many hard yards in the region in the past few years and will look at all avenues to determine how best to progress their projects through the shared facility.
They are also open to potentially teaming up with other local explorers and developers if they can bring further benefits to the partnership table.
Tennant, Emmerson and CuFe have all made recent high-grade discoveries that provide compelling opportunities to leverage their success with the other alliance members, particularly given the independent development of even modest-sized deposits has become significantly harder due to modern-day environmental, regulatory and financial hurdles.
CuFe is a 55 per cent stakeholder and operator of the region’s Orlando-Gecko and Goanna copper-gold projects.
Tennant recently had some eye-popping discoveries at its Bluebird prospect within its Barkly project, with a best 61.8-metre hit at 2.3 per cent copper and 0.4 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and a 63m section going 2.1 per cent copper and 4.6g/t gold.
Management believes Bluebird has similar potential to other high-grade deposits discovered at Tennant Creek, such as the historically significant Warrego deposit’s 6.75 million tonnes at 6.6g/t gold and 1.9 per cent copper and ASX-listed Elmore Limited’s Peko 3.7mt deposit going 4 per cent copper and 3.5g/t gold.
Emmerson revealed in January its impressive maiden mineral resource for the company’s White Devil deposit it has in a joint venture with Pan African Resources subsidiary TCMG.
The company raised a few eyebrows when it unveiled a 3.63mt maiden resource grading 4.2g/t gold for a stellar 489,900 ounces of gold.
Emmerson has previously revealed astonishing hits of 119m at 3.3 per cent copper and 0.87g/t gold and a 94.4m intersection grading 2.74 per cent copper and 5.58g/t gold from its Hermitage discovery.
Emmerson also has an existing carbon-in-leach gold-only facility being constructed in the area by its joint venture partner TCMG, however, a proposed facility by the group alliance would be wider-reaching and include processing of copper and critical minerals.
With the recent surge in gold and copper prices, which has seen gold surpass US$3000 (A$4766) per ounce and copper up to US$5.07 (A$8.06) per pound, a serious look at how best to develop a processing facility in the Tennant Creek region appears to make sense.
The area is starved of gold and copper mills causing project deposits to become “stranded assets”, so an ability to process the mineralisation nearby could provide a big boost to worthy projects and provide a welcome boost in regional employment opportunities.
The Territory’s mines minister has written supporting the scheme and its potential to deliver economic benefits to the region.
Historically, the Tennant Creek mineral field had several high-grade mines feeding centralised processing facilities. The alliance’s scoping study will take a giant step towards answering whether that familiar scenario is the best way forward in today’s at-times difficult and costly mining environment.
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