Mining News: Tesoro eyes 'material' increase to Ternera's gold

Tesoro eyes 'material' increase to Ternera's gold

Tesoro eyes 'material' increase to Ternera's gold

Company has had success drilling down-plunge

Chile-focused gold explorer Tesoro claims its latest drilling work shows a "materially longer mine life" could potentially be expected at its El Zorro project.

Drilling down plunge of the project's Ternera deposit recorded 8.8m grading 3.54 grams per tonne gold from 576m, including 1m at 27.7gpt.

Another hole drilled 7.1m grading 1.3gpt from 670m.

The results were 400m down-plunge from the current resource.

Ternera has a pit-restrained mineral resource estimate of 1.82 million ounces at 1.1gpt gold, with 60% of the resource in the indicated category.

The Zeff Reeves-led Tesoro is undertaking infill and exploration drilling, as well as prefeasibility work.

A 2025 scoping study outlined a US$250 million, 3Mt-per-annum development producing circa 111,000ozpa at all-in-sustaining costs of $1216/oz.

Using a gold price of $2750/oz, the project was assessed as having an NPV of $663 million and IRR of 51%.

Upping the gold price to just under $4000/oz increased the NPV to more than $1.3 billion and the IRR to 85%.

The current gold price is around $5000/oz.

With cash at the end of December of A$29 million, Tesoro has a current enterprise value of circa $180 million.

During a positive session for the ASX gold sector on Monday, shares in Tesoro were up 14% to $1.18 in early afternoon trade, capitalising the company at $209 million.

Fresh equity raised in September/October last year was effectively priced 79.5c per share.