Modern Mining March 2018

TIN

Most of the infrastructure of the old mine has either been removed or is in a state of dis- repair, so AfriTin is essentially having to start from scratch at Uis. “Currently, we have a small 3 t/h pilot plant on site which we’re using for metallurgical testing. We are, however, in the process of building our Phase 1 plant which will allow us to produce up to 780 tonnes of tin concentrate per annum,” says Viljoen. “Next year, we will start on our Phase 2 plant, which will be a full-scale facility able to treat 3 Mt/a ROM. We envisage that this will be commissioned in 2020, enabling us to start a ramp up to a steady-state production level of 5 000 tonnes per annum of a 65 % tin concentrate.” AfriTin has already made good progress in procuring equipment for the Phase 1 plant, announcing in January this year that it had purchased the entire front-end crushing compo- nent required through its Namibian subsidiary, Dawnmin Africa Investments. The equipment includes a jaw crusher, three cone crushers, stacking and conveying equipment and electri- cal switchgear. It also announced that it had appointed Crushplant & Utility Spares, a Namibian-based

from the Uis project, AfriTin also inherited the Mokopane tin project in South Africa from Bushveld. The Uis tin mine is located within the Uis pegmatite swarm. The primary mineral is cassiterite (SnO 2 ), with secondary tantalum, niobium and lithium. A mine planning report compiled in the late 1980s by SRK identified reserves of 73 Mt at 0,136 % Sn (with an addi- tional 2,7 Mt at 0,015 % Ta 2 O 5 ) containing just over 95 000 tonnes of tin. “The SRK figures are not compliant with modern reporting codes and we are in the process of preparing our own mineral resource estimate but clearly we have a substantial deposit,” says Viljoen. “Moreover, there is a strong possibility that we could exploit the secondary minerals to enhance the economics of the project.” He stresses the exploration upside at Uis. “Imcor’s mining operations were extensive and saw mining taking place in about 12 separate pits. Nevertheless, there is still huge scope for exploration as there are many virgin pegmatite outcrops across our mining licence area which were never evaluated in the past. Imcor exploited only a small part of what is a vast area of mineralisation.”

Mining at Uis was under- taken in multiple pits which are open-ended at depth.

30  MODERN MINING  March 2018