Tertiary Minerals plc announced that the Company has completed its first drill programme at the Jacks Copper Project (Jacks) in Zambia. Jacks lies within exploration licence 27069-HQ-LEL, held by local partner Mwashia Resources Limited (Mwashia). Tertiary has an exclusive option to earn up to a 90% joint venture interest in the licence.

Upon entering into its agreement with Mwashia, Tertiary obtained all available historical exploration data and performed a spatially integrated data review and constructed a preliminary geological model. This suggested that the Jack's Project area presented an attractive drill target where historical drilling intersected significant copper mineralisation and which the Company believes justified follow-up exploration. The historical data had limitations on the positional accuracy of historic drill holes and so to assist with drill targeting the Company conducted field geochemical analysis of soils using a pXRF analyser along and between the profiles of historical drilling.

Several strong copper anomalies were identified which, when correlated with historical soil geochemistry, allowed the interpreted geological model to be spatially refined. In May 2022, Tertiary contracted Ox Drilling to conduct a diamond drilling programme with geological supervision and drill management performed by GeoQuest Limited. Four holes were completed on two traverses spaced approximately 150m apart for a total of 746m of drilling.

During the drill programme core orientation was carried out together with preliminary analysis using portable pXRF to provide real-time interpretation of drill intersections and facilitate the positioning of subsequent holes. All drillhole collars were surveyed via GPS and downhole surveys were completed prior to plugging and marking drill holes in the field. Systematic drill core analysis using the pXRF has indicated that all four holes intersected copper mineralisation.

Whilst pXRF analyses are a good guide to the occurrence of mineralisation, the pXRF results now need to be confirmed and quantified by follow up laboratory based analysis. Consequently 186 samples were cut from the drill core on-site and, along with internal QA/QC samples, were delivered to SGS Laboratories in Kalulushi for analysis. The Company expects the analytical results to be available within a few weeks .