Modern Mining January 2021

tin mining landscape

Another key has been the mine’s location in Namibia, he adds. The site lies approximately 2 km away from the Uis town and 330 km from Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. As a friendly and experienced mining jurisdiction, with a highly skilled workforce, the community’s support has enabled the rapid deployment of key updates to the project’s process- ing system. “We are delighted to have achieved nameplate tin concentrate production of 63,9 t, at our flagship asset, the Uis Tin Mine, ahead of year end. This is a defining milestone that has been achieved by the company. The success speaks volumes of the high quality nature of the asset and the calibre of our management team, whom I would like to sincerely congratulate given the macro challenges faced as a result of the global pandemic,” says Viljoen. “Furthermore, the accomplishment provides us with the platform to progress, with proven confi- dence, our development plan for the Uis Tin Mine towards a large-scale mining and processing facility.” Optimisation initiatives The Uis Tin Mine project involves the redevelopment of the historic Uis hard rock mine. AfriTin is develop- ing the project in two phases, with Phase 1 involving an estimated capital expenditure of £7-million on a processing plant capable of producing 60 t of tin concentrate per month. The Phase 1 processing plant commenced par- tial operations in August 2019. Following the initial production of tin concentrate, processing plant

throughput increased by an average 63% month- on-month from 4 300 t achieved in November 2019, to 5 800 t in December 2019, and to 11 400 t in January 2020. The ramp-up programme continued to progress well throughout the year, leading to nameplate capacity by November 2020. Central to exceeding nameplate production and reaching this milestone prior to the end of 2020 as previously projected was the implementation of optimisation initiatives during the year. According to Viljoen, Uis has a huge resource and the most important part is optimising throughput and

AfriTin will now focus on maintaining steady state production, while exploring opportunities for further optimisation and expansion of the operation.

Tin concentrate production for the year to November 2020 totalled 301 t.

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