Modern Mining March 2018

TIN

AfriTin works to revive historic Uis tin mine Spurred on by a tin price that is already very healthy (US$21 600/tonne as of early March) and set to possibly go even higher, several junior mining companies are pursuing tin projects around Africa. Among them is AIM‑listed AfriTin, which has an 85 % interest in the past-producing Uis tin mine in Namibia. AfriTin’s Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Viljoen, says the company intends bringing Uis back into operation later this year. “Initial production will be on a small scale but our intention is to upscale to 5 000 t/a of tin concentrate within several years,” he recently told Modern Mining .

T he Uis project, which comprises three separate mining licences, is located 220 km north of the Port of Walvis Bay in Namibia’s Erongo region (and close to the famous Brandberg Mountain). Although the tin min- eralisation at Uis was discovered in 1911, it was only in the early 1950s that a commercial- scale mine was established at the site. This was acquired by Imcor (a subsidiary of Iscor) in 1958. Imcor started operations with a 35 t/h extraction plant which was enlarged in 1966 and then again in 1980 to an eventual capac- ity of 140 t/h. The mine continued to produce

through to 1990 when it was closed due to a collapse in the tin price. “In its day, Uis ranked as the larg- est hard-rock tin

mine in the world,” says Viljoen. “Annual tin production was as much as 1 500 tonnes, which was very substantial for that era. Since the closure of the mine, there have been several attempts to re-establish operations but none of them succeeded. We aim to break that pattern. We have a clear strategy to revive Uis and we should be selling our first concentrates within the next few months, making us the first of the new crop of aspiring African tin producers to enter production.” The grade of the Uis deposits is very low but this is balanced by the fact that opencast mining methods can be employed. “Most tin production globally is either from high- cost underground mines, which account for around 60 % of production, or from alluvial operations,” Viljoen explains. “Once we’re in operation, we will be one of only a relatively few open-pit tin mines globally and, in fact, will be comparable in many respects to the Pitinga mine in Brazil, currently the world’s biggest open-pit tin mine. We will also benefit from an orebody that is exceptionally coarse-grained, which makes for very low comminution costs and a simple process flowsheet.” Viljoen also points out that the Uis project is located in one of the most stable mining jurisdictions – indeed, one of the most stable countries – in Africa. It is in an area served by

Mining entrepreneur takes on tin AfriTin’s CEO, Anthony Viljoen, is a co- founder of VM Investment Company, which was established in 2006 to iden- tify and invest in promising minerals projects in Africa.

VM’s biggest success has undoubt- edly been AfriTin’s ‘sister’ company, Bushveld Minerals, now a vanadium producer following its acquisition of Bushveld Vametco last year. Bushveld, run by Viljoen’s long-time business partner, Fortune Mojapelo, also has coal interests in Madagascar which are owned through its subsidiary, Lemur Resources. Other ventures Viljoen is involved with include New Kush Exploration & Mining, which is exploring for gold in East Africa, with its focus being on South Sudan, northern Uganda and Ethiopia. While Viljoen has a financial background, he has focused on the minerals industry through most of his career. His father is Professor Richard Viljoen and his uncle Professor Morris Viljoen, two of South Africa’s most eminent geologists. They both act as advisers to VM and its associate companies. 

28  MODERN MINING  March 2018