Tertiary Minerals' Zambia partner gets approval for Mushima North

Tertiary Minerals announced on Monday that its local partner and licence holder Mwashia Resources had now received approval of its environmental project brief (EPB) from the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) for the Mushima North Copper Projects.

The AIM-traded firm said it is earning up to a 90% interest in the project.

It said Mushima North, together with the Mukai Project in Zambia, benefitted from a data sharing and technical agreement with global copper producer First Quantum Minerals as announced in September.

The company noted that the latest approval followed the approval of EPBs for the Konkola West and Lubuila projects in November, while the approval process for the EPB for the Mukai Copper Project - the final outstanding EPB - was set to be at an “advanced” stage.

Its board described EPB approval as a “key approval” required before field exploration programmes could proceed.

“I am delighted to report that we have received EPB approval for the Mushima North Copper Project where we are currently working through the shared FQM data in preparation for the coming field exploration season,” said executive chairman Patrick Cheetham.

“On a recent visit to Zambia in December, our exploration manager recovered sulphide mineralised drill core from a drill hole completed in the 1960's at Mushima North which reportedly tested an extensive copper-in-soil anomaly and intersected wide zones of low-grade copper mineralisation.

“We will be assaying this core shortly to validate this early target.”

At 1605 GMT, shares in Tertiary Minerals were up 9.68% at 0.17p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.