Terra Critical Minerals (ASX: T92) Prepares to Test a Large Historical Tungsten System in NSW
- Noel Ong
- 1 hour ago
- 9 min read
The company is advancing the Glen Eden Tungsten Project in New South Wales, where historical drilling has outlined a large polymetallic system containing tungsten, molybdenum, tin and bismuth.
Terra Critical Minerals Limited (ASX: T92) is moving closer to modern drilling at its Glen Eden Project in New South Wales.
The project's historical exploration has outlined a broad tungsten-molybdenum-tin-bismuth mineralised system carrying an Exploration Target of 20–30 million tonnes at 0.18–0.29% WO₃ equivalent.
Meanwhile, the latest development here is the receipt of full land-access approval across the project, but the more important investment story is what that access may now allow Terra to test.
Glen Eden contains an approximately 500-metre-diameter greisen, stockwork and breccia complex within a much broader hydrothermal alteration system measuring approximately 1,500 metres by 800 metres. Historical drilling has returned mineralised intervals extending for hundreds of metres, while the existing Exploration Target has been defined to only around 100–150 metres depth (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Glen Eden Project Overview Map with drilling and soil geochemistry (Source: ASX Announcement)
That combination of scale, historical drilling and relatively shallow definition is what makes Glen Eden interesting.
The question now is whether modern drilling can validate that historical picture and begin converting it into a contemporary JORC Mineral Resource.
Key Highlights
Glen Eden hosts an Exploration Target of 20–30Mt at 0.18–0.29% WO₃ equivalent.
The Exploration Target is currently defined to only approximately 100–150 metres depth.
Historical drilling includes:
282m at 0.28% WO₃ equivalent from 7m;
235m at 0.25% WO₃ equivalent from 15m; and
392m at 0.14% WO₃ equivalent from 3m.
The mineralised core is approximately 500m in diameter.
The broader hydrothermal alteration system extends approximately 1,500m by 800m.
Historical drilling has reached approximately 395m vertical depth.
Terra says the interpreted mineralised system remains open at depth and that deeper parts of the system remain largely untested.
The Exploration Target also contains an average 121ppm bismuth, which is not included in the tungsten-equivalent calculation.
Full land-access approval has now been secured, allowing Terra to progress towards a modern drilling program once remaining environmental, heritage and statutory requirements are completed.
What Is Glen Eden?
Glen Eden sits within Terra's New England critical and precious metals portfolio in New South Wales (Figure 2).
The project is characterised by a large hydrothermal system developed within rhyolitic volcanic rocks.
Terra describes an initial alteration zone extending approximately 1,500m by 800m. Within this sits an irregular approximately 500m-diameter core complex comprising veining and greisen breccias, which has subsequently been overprinted by more intense stockwork and greisen brecciation.
This is important because Glen Eden is not being presented as a collection of narrow isolated tungsten veins.
The geological model is of a much broader intrusive-related mineralising system.
Beyond the central greisen complex, Terra reports a wider alteration halo containing sericitic, phyllic and potassic alteration, which the company considers indicative of a potentially large mineralised system.
The intrusive source itself has not been exposed at surface and, according to Terra, has not been intersected by historical diamond drilling.
Historical 3D modelling undertaken by Amoco in 1981 proposed that deeper, untested parts of the system may contain a larger molybdenum-tungsten style deposit.
That historical interpretation is not a modern resource model, but it does give Terra a clear geological concept to test.
Figure 2: Location of T92 New England Projects and nearby deposits (Source: ASX Announcement)
The Historical Drilling Is Hard to Ignore
The part of Glen Eden that stands out most strongly is the width of some of the historical mineralised intervals.
Terra highlights:
GENSW80-13: 282m at 0.28% WO₃ equivalent from 7m.
GENSW80-24: 235m at 0.25% WO₃ equivalent from 15m.
GENSW81-55: 392m at 0.14% WO₃ equivalent from 3m.
For an exploration project, those widths immediately raise questions about the scale and geometry of the mineralised system.
They should not, however, be confused with a Mineral Resource.
The intersections are historical and the project has not yet undergone the modern drilling required to establish the continuity, geometry and grade distribution needed for a contemporary resource estimate.
But they provide Terra with something many early-stage explorers do not have:
a substantial body of drilling already indicating that mineralisation exists over considerable widths.
Historical exploration between 1963 and 2006 comprised 18 holes through the core zone for a total of 3,388 metres, with the deepest hole reaching approximately 395m vertically.
The task for Terra is therefore not simply to discover whether Glen Eden is mineralised.
It is to determine what the historical work means when tested using modern exploration standards.
A 20–30Mt Exploration Target — But Only Near Surface
The existing Exploration Target is perhaps the most important part of the Glen Eden story.
Terra reports:
20–30Mt at 0.05–0.08% WO₃, 0.02–0.04% SnO₂ and 0.07–0.10% MoS₂, corresponding to approximately 0.18–0.29% WO₃ equivalent.
The company has also identified an average 121ppm bismuth within the same target, with bismuth excluded from the metal-equivalent calculation.
What makes the target particularly interesting is its depth constraint.
It has been calculated to only approximately 100–150 metres depth.
Yet historical drilling extends substantially deeper, reaching approximately 395m vertically, and Terra says the interpreted mineralised system remains open at depth.
That creates what may ultimately become one of the key exploration questions at Glen Eden:
Is the current Exploration Target describing only the shallow expression of a materially larger mineralised system?
There is not yet enough modern exploration to answer that.
But that is precisely why drilling matters.
Figure 3: Glen Eden Project Overview Map with Historical drilling (Source:: ASX Announcement)
What the Cross-Section Shows for Terra Critical Minerals
The project cross-section presented in Figure 3 gives some visual context to the Glen Eden story.
It shows historical drill holes distributed across approximately 500 metres of the interpreted core zone, with a number of holes extending through broad interpreted zones of alteration and mineralisation.
Significantly, the diagram also marks the mineralised system as open beneath the historical drilling.
The accompanying plan view shows tungsten and molybdenum soil geochemistry distributed around the approximately 500m core target zone and helps demonstrate that Terra is dealing with a substantial geological footprint rather than a single discrete occurrence.
For investors looking at exploration projects, these figures help explain why modern drilling is likely to be the defining next step.
Tungsten Is Only Part of the Mineral System
Although Glen Eden is increasingly being positioned as a tungsten project, the mineralisation is polymetallic.
The Exploration Target contains tungsten, tin and molybdenum, together with identified bismuth.
That diversity is geologically consistent with the intrusive-related greisen system Terra is targeting.
It also means that understanding Glen Eden will eventually require more than simply reporting tungsten grades.
The value of the project, should exploration prove successful, will ultimately depend on the distribution, recovery and potential economic contribution of the different metals within the system.
At this stage, however, it remains too early to assign economic value to those components.
The immediate requirement is geological definition.
Modern Drilling Is the Real Test
Terra's next major objective is to drill the existing Exploration Target and begin generating the modern dataset needed to assess a pathway towards a maiden JORC Mineral Resource.
The company states that drilling will proceed once site access and remaining statutory approvals are completed.
The land-access announcement therefore matters because it brings that drilling closer.
In the June quarterly, Terra had specifically identified Glen Eden land access, permitting and drill planning as current activities, with finalising access and approvals and confirming the drilling program identified as the next milestone.
The latest announcement shows tangible progress against that stated plan.
However, the important event for Glen Eden will not ultimately be the access agreement.
It will be the drill results that follow.
What Investors Need to Remember
There is a significant distinction between an Exploration Target and a Mineral Resource.
Terra explicitly states that the potential quantity and grade of the Glen Eden Exploration Target are conceptual in nature.
Insufficient modern exploration has been completed to estimate a Mineral Resource, and there is no certainty that the planned infill drilling will ultimately result in one.
That qualification should remain front and centre.
The appeal of Glen Eden is not that Terra already has a 20–30Mt resource.
It does not.
The appeal is that Terra has inherited a substantial historical dataset indicating a large mineralised footprint, unusually broad historical intersections and an Exploration Target defined over only a comparatively shallow part of the interpreted system.
The company now has to prove what that historical work is worth.
Samso Concluding Comments
Glen Eden is becoming a much more interesting project than simply a tungsten exploration story built around an access announcement.
The land-access approval is useful because it advances the project towards drilling, but the real story sits in the geology.
There is an approximately 500m-diameter mineralised core, a broader 1.5km by 800m hydrothermal system, historical drilling measured in hundreds of metres and a 20–30Mt Exploration Target currently confined to the upper 100–150 metres.
That is enough geological evidence to make modern drilling meaningful.
What I find most interesting is the mismatch between the shallow depth of the existing Exploration Target and the substantially deeper interpreted mineralised system.
Historical drilling has already reached around 395 metres vertically, yet Terra's target has been constrained to only 100–150 metres.
That leaves an obvious question about what sits beneath it.
At this point, it would be easy to get carried away with the historical widths. The right approach is to recognise them for what they are: evidence that Terra has something substantial to investigate, but not yet proof of an economic deposit.
That distinction is important.
The next drilling program needs to establish continuity, confirm grades using modern methods, improve the geological model and determine whether Glen Eden can progress from a conceptual Exploration Target into a JORC Mineral Resource.
If Terra can do that, the conversation around Glen Eden changes substantially.
Until then, this is an exploration story — but it is one with enough historical evidence and geological scale to warrant attention.
Market Implications
Terra Critical Minerals has a market capitalisation of just under AUD $8M, and they are sitting on what could be a "workable" tungsten story. The land access question has held me back in making commentary, but now that is completed, this is going to be a story that could make waves.
Figure 4 The share price chart for Terra Critical Minerals Limited as of the 24th August 2026. (source: Commsec)
For those who have been following the Samso journey, you will know well that I have been calling tungsten as the real critical story. My past experience with this commodity goes back to 2011 when I was involved in the Kirwan Tungsten project in the South Island of New Zealand. The geology of Glen Eden is very similar to Kirwan, and I feel that the potential size of Eden could be the one that makes Terra Critical stand out when the work on the geological side begins.
I am a recent shareholder of the company because land access is the first of many important steps for the company. It goes without saying that land access is the most critical, as it allows boots on the ground. For those that have followed the tungsten story, there is not many companies that have a market capitalisation of AUD 8M and hold what, in my opinion, is the most exciting tungsten project on the ASX.
Our recent Understanding Tungsten series is a must-read for those wanting to know my enthusiasm for Glen Eden. There are Part 2 and Part 3, which will complete the understanding of why having the right type of tungsten project is very important (see below).
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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