By: OrePulse

Tertiary Minerals has unveiled a fresh round of high-grade drilling results from its Mushima North project in Zambia, featuring standout silver, copper and zinc intersections — including the strongest single silver assay the company has recorded at the site so far.

The AIM-listed exploration firm confirmed that all 13 holes drilled during the Phase 4 program at the Discovery Zone, within Target A1, encountered polymetallic mineralization close to the surface. A standout figure was an individual silver assay of 471 grams per tonne — the best result the project has produced to date.

The most significant intersection from this round stretched 121 meters. It graded 78 grams per tonne silver equivalent, starting just 4 meters beneath the surface and continuing down to a vertical depth of 125 meters. This outperforms the project's previous top result of 97 meters at 85 grams per tonne silver equivalent, effectively broadening the footprint of high-grade, near-surface mineralization already identified at Target A1.

The drilling campaign also turned up multiple copper intersections spanning several meters, with grades consistently topping 1% copper — including a notable 10-meter section grading 1.01% copper starting at 80 meters downhole. Taken together, the presence of silver, copper and zinc at grades this strong so close to the surface points toward a polymetallic deposit that could potentially be mined relatively cheaply via open-pit methods, should the project advance further.

Managing director Richard Belcher noted that the company continues to produce increasingly strong silver results, with individual assays as high as 471 g/t silver, alongside noteworthy copper intersections spanning several meters that average more than 1% copper. He said these findings further support the company's exploration strategy centered on bulk-tonnage, open-pit silver mining, and underscore what he sees as the project's broader potential.

Target A1 is classified as a polymetallic silver-copper-zinc prospect, with an already-established near-surface exploration target ranging from 15 million to 30 million tonnes at grades of 40 to 60 grams per tonne silver equivalent. Because the mineralization uncovered thus far lies relatively shallow, it could theoretically be extracted using standard open-pit mining techniques — a considerably less expensive approach than the underground methods typically required for deeper silver-copper deposits. This factor strengthens the overall case for the exploration target's relevance to the project's future economic viability.

Geographically, Mushima North sits about 28 kilometers east of the historic Kalengwa copper-silver mine, a site currently being redeveloped, within a broader region of Zambia recognized for its potential to host iron-oxide-copper-gold style mineral deposits. The latest Phase 4 assay results build on an expanding body of data from the Discovery Zone, which the company says continues to strengthen the case for the scale and grade potential of the polymetallic system found at Target A1.

Looking ahead, Tertiary Minerals says it will keep evaluating these results as it maps out further exploration work at Mushima North, with the project's focus remaining on more precisely defining the boundaries of the near-surface silver-copper-zinc mineralization identified so far.