Tennant Creek gold and copper shines in new light after Chalice find

• A new discovery has shone a light on the historic Tennant Creek copper and gold district
• Chalice Mining has found high-grade gold and copper at Kestrel on tenure granted after years of negotiations with Traditional Owners
• It follows the revival of the region’s historic mines by Pan African Resources, CuFe and Tennant Minerals

Tennant Creek’s historic gold and copper scene could be viewed in a new light after Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) claimed a greenfields discovery on a prospect it’s been itching to drill for close to a decade.

The region around 350km north of Alice Springs has already experienced a mini-revival after multi-billion-dollar international gold miner Pan African Resources (ASX:PAF) muscled in via successive takeovers of Tennant Creek Mineral Group and its JV partner Emmerson Resources.

Chalice shares have moved up steadily since Monday, when the owner of the Gonneville nickel and palladium deposit in WA returned to its roots as a prospect generator.

Its discovery hole at the Kestrel prospect, part of the Warrego North project, clocked in at 15m at 8.6g/t gold and 0.54% copper from 78m, within a broader hit of 27m at 4.8g/t gold and 0.42% copper.

Economic grades of copper and gold were picked up across multiple samples in six holes spanning a 500m strike.

The prospect sits just 20km from the Warrego mine, which historically produced around 1.33Moz of gold at 8g/t, 91,500t of copper at 2% Cu and 12,000t of critical mineral bismuth at 0.3%.

Beyond that the whole district has produced around 5Moz at close to 7g/t and 470,000t of copper at an average 2.8% Cu, including standout orebodies like Juno – 840,000oz at 57g/t Au and 1400t copper at 0.4% Cu – and White Devil – 640,000oz at 15.2g/t gold.

Chalice says the significance of Kestrel is that its copper and gold is associated with hematite alteration rather than the ironstones typically found in Tennant Creek.

That means ground with weaker magnetic signatures could play host to previously untested copper and gold mineralisation.

“We’re super encouraged by the fact that we’ve hit copper in all the first six holes,” Chalice managing director Alex Dorsch said.

“We haven’t really missed it and that means the footprint is good, we’ve got good structure, broad copper zones and the high-grade gold will be in there as we zoom in a bit, keep drilling closer and down to find the plunge of these things.“

Mining revival

Pan African commissioned the 840,000tpa Nobles processing plant in May 2025, bringing the Tennant Creek mineral field back to life for the first time since the turn of the century.

It is expected to contribute 48-52,000oz to the firm’s global production base of 280-302,000oz this year.

It has 1.84Moz of resources at a host of mainly brownfields deposits, 780,000oz of those in reserves at 3.65g/t.

But beyond that Pan African has bigger ambitions via the development of the Warrego copper-gold project, which contains 16.5Mt of copper ore at 1.33% for 219,600t copper metal, 60km northwest of Nobles.

That’s where the story gets really interesting for junior mining investors.

Pan African in May made a $15.35m investment in neighbour CuFe (ASX:CUF) at 5c a share to take an initial 15% stake.

CuFe was, along with fellow small cap Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS), in an alliance to pursue a shared copper processing pathway with Tennant and Pan African takeover target Emmerson.

CuFe owns the Gecko and Orlando projects, which combined host 23.5Mt at 1.73% copper and 0.72g/t gold for 405,000t copper and 544,000oz gold, along with 2.9Moz of silver and 16,500t of bismuth.

It recently entered an agreement to consolidate the asset 100% with minority holder Gold Valley Investment Pty Ltd and Horseshoe Manganese Pty Ltd.

Tennant’s Bluebird, meanwhile contains 20,600t of copper, 52,900oz of gold, 135,600oz silver and 1326t of bismuth.

Mark Hancock, the exec director of $116m capped CuFe, said $400m capped Chalice’s discovery would allow investors to see the junior’s assets in a new light.

“There’s obviously been a lot of publicity and interest that flows on from that does get the different sets of eyes on it,” he said.

“And I think over time that’ll also give us the chance to demonstrate the scale of what we have there, which is probably not very well understood by the market at this point in time.”

Warrego has already been subject to studies by Pan African and highlighted as its next development prospect in the Tennant Creek district.

Dorsch said Chalice was aiming to find a deposit of ‘real tier-1 size’ carrying a $1bn NPV or above.

But he noted Pan African’s planned central copper-gold processing hub just 20km away meant there were strong development prospects for discoveries of smaller scale as well.

“It couldn’t be better from a proximity to infrastructure perspective,” Dorsch said.

“It’s wide open country out there west of Warrego. So I think we’ll keep our focus on that (standalone discovery opportunity).

“And then obviously keep a close eye on what Pan African and CuFe are up to.”

Fresh thinking

Chalice’s drilling success, incredibly, comes nine years after it first identified targets in the region.

What followed was over five years of negotiations for land access with Native Title holders and the Central Land Council, resolved with the granting of tenure in May 2026.

The first reconnaissance program was completed in September and October, comprising 16 holes for 3108m of core.

Kestrel is located 1km west of an historical target called Chook, which was also drilled along with the Eagle, Chook North and Big Bird targets.

With 5Moz already mined in the region, Dorsch says Chalice is hoping to find something which could eclipse historic deposits.

Dorsch believes Kestrel will be just the first discovery on its Warrego North tenure.

“The good deposits were obviously mined out by the ’90s and they were relatively easy to find because they’re so obvious on the geophysics,” he said.

“Now what’s opened it up is access to the Aboriginal land. We’ve taken a five plus year negotiation … to get into the … land there.

“We’ve extended the potential of the field, we reckon, up to 140km further to the northwest and there’s nothing really constraining the field other than a boundary.

“I think it will get a lot more attention, obviously by us now as I guess the key greenfield explorer, but obviously Pan (African) doing a lot of brownfield exploration around their existing deposits. I can see it getting much more of a profile in the near term.”

CuFe has its own 20,000m drill program ongoing, seeking to extend known mineralisation and test greenfield targets.

“We very much share the view that was expressed by Chalice that there’s a lot of scope for further exploration of this area,” Hancock said.

“It’s a mature area in certain ways, there’s been a lot of drilling, but there’s been a lot of drilling in the same places, just chasing the same concepts.

“There hasn’t necessarily been different ways of thinking or targeting different areas. We believe there’s a lot of potential to come, part of which we’re hopefully going to realise in the near term as we wrap up this drilling campaign over the next couple of months.”

Copper excitement

Along with the high-grade nature of the gold find, Dorsch said striking copper across six holes over 500m had drawn attention to Chalice in recent days.

The red metal has been hotter than hot this year, with prices of over US$14,000/t linked to supply shortages and growing demand from AI data centres.

“In this copper price environment you can imagine the attention that’s been on us since announcing those hits – any copper anywhere in Australia is very hot property right now,” Dorsch said.

Hancock said the hunger for copper miners meant there was significant upside for a company with CuFe’s resource position.

“Our deal pack shows that for the four or five ASX-listed transactions in the copper space that have happened, we’re paying a multiple that’s probably half (of) what was paid in those deals,” he said.

“So there’s still a lot of upside in the stock based on those ASX-based transactions.”

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While CuFe is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

The post Tennant Creek gold and copper shines in new light after Chalice find appeared first on Stockhead.