RNS Number:5071U
Tertiary Minerals PLC
22 November 2000
Tertiary Minerals plc
TERTIARY STARTS DRILLING IN FINLAND THIS WEEK
AT ITS TANTALUM PROSPECT
* Search Underway For Rare Metals Essential For Electronics And Telecoms
# Further Drilling Scheduled For Three Projects In Sweden
AIM-listed Tertiary Minerals plc announces today that drilling will start this
week at its Viitaniemi tantalum prospect in Finland and the Company also
outlines plans for further drilling at three projects in Sweden that are being
tested for gold, copper, zinc, silver and platinum group metals.
The Geological Survey of Finland has been contracted to carry out a
preliminary programme of eight to ten large-diameter diamond drill holes to
test the Viitaniemi pegmatite deposit in the Erajarvi district of central
southern Finland for tantalum and caesium, rare metals that are essential to
the electronics and telecommunications industries, particularly for components
used in mobile 'phones and laptop computers.
It is expected that drilling will be completed by the end of December and
assay results should be available by January 31, 2001.
Tertiary points out that only certain types of pegmatite (a coarse grained
granitic rock) have potential for rare metals. The Viitaniemi prospect is well
documented as a rare-metal bearing pegmatite. It was mined on a small scale
for feldspar for 20 years until 1963 and samples of tantalum and caesium
minerals can still be found on the waste dumps.
Drilling will test the pegmatite at 50m to 100m intervals over a strike length
of about 550m to give a preliminary indication of the tantalum/caesium grade
and grade distribution. Tertiary points out that the deposit is known to be
flat lying and runs close to surface, so it should be amenable to low cost,
open pit mining if commercially recoverable grades can be found.
Tertiary's plans for the three Swedish projects include:
* Starting in early December, 2000, drilling two holes as an initial test
of a strong gold-copper geochemical anomaly in glacial till at the Enasen
target on the Juniper Ridge project in central Sweden;
* After completing the work at Juniper Ridge, drilling two holes at the
Kukkola Project, in northern Sweden close to the Finnish border, to test a
geophysical conductor in the footwall of the Proterozoic Kukkola mafic
complex. The programme will test the possibility that the conductor is due
to sulphide mineralisation which, in this geological setting, would be
prospective for platinum group metals.
* A programme of 1,200m of diamond drilling at the Windfall zinc-silver
project in the historic Bergslagen mining district of south-central
Sweden, provisionally planned to begin in mid-January, 2001. Tertiary
recently completed follow-up Mobile Metal Ion ("MMI") geochemical sampling
to infill and better define existing MMI geochemical anomalies. The next
drilling programme will test for extensions to the known Windfall and
Sortarnan prospects, particularly in positions having anomalous MMI
geochemistry.
Further Information:
Patrick Cheetham, Executive Chairman, Tertiary Minerals plc. Tel: 01625 626203
Ron Marshman or Ken Gooding, City of London PR Ltd. Tel: 020 7628 5518
| 
