Aim-listed junior iron-ore and tin explorer Bushveld Minerals plans to prove up more than 20 000 t of tin in its licence area by expanding the Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (Jorc-) compliant resource base this year.

The company intends to initiate a drilling programme this year with at least one target in the licence area and another target in an area that is currently under application.

“Our tin project comprises a small open castable resource of almost 6 000 t of tin that we have established at one target – the Groenfontein Farm in Mokopane, Limpopo – out of a possible five targets identified in the tin licence area, which lie along a 10 km strike.

“The drilling at Groenfontein established a Jorc-compliant resource of 5 995 t of contained tin. The drilling programme is under way at the second target at Zaaiplaats, also in Mokopane, from which, historically, more than 100 000 t of tin has been mined.

“The vertical chip sampling profiles taken to estimate the grades remaining at Zaaiplaats gave intersections that yielded grades greater than 0.2% tin for 12 out of the 15 profiles in the openpit and for eight out of the 15 under- ground profiles,” says Bushveld Minerals CEO Fortune Mojapelo.

Fifteen vertical underground chip sampling profiles were taken along the sidewalls of the surveyed tunnels. Some of the underground lines that were sampled indicated that the grade is higher than 1% tin in some areas, with most areas exceeding 0.1% tin, states Bushveld Minerals.

The company aimed to drill 45 boreholes at the Zaaiplaats target by mid-December last year. By the end of November, it had drilled 27 holes, with depths ranging from 20 m to 150 m. A resource statement on the drilling results is expected by mid-May this year.

Bushveld Minerals has also started a metallurgical testwork programme on the tin projects, which will determine their key grade and recovery parameters. These initiatives, as well as several tailings opportunities the company is evaluating, will help achieve the company’s long-term objective of developing its projects towards production within 12 to 18 months. This also includes the commissioning of a production plant at Groenfontein targeting about 10 000 t of contained tin resources between the Groenfontein target and nearby Zaaiplaats targets.

Sustained Demand Growth
Global tin trade association ITRI’s survey, published in May 2012, confirmed that the yearly total tonnage of tin used had stagnated in the last five years, following rapid growth from the mid-1990s to the all-time high reached in 2007. This was followed by a strong recovery in demand in 2010, after the global financial crisis in 2008/9. Preliminary data for 2011 indicated a marginal decline in use.

However, according to the London Stock Exchange (LSE), tin has been among the top performing metals traded on the London Metal Exchange, with recorded prices of $33 000/t in April 2011. The LSE expects that a tight market balance in 2012, led by a sustained decrease in tin investors, has constrained supply conditions, but a sustained growing demand is expected to support strong tin prices in future.

In October 2012, Reuters reported that tin prices rose to $22 105/t on the London Metal Exchange from $20 275/t in September. Another factor supporting tin prices is rising demand from China for tin imports, which doubled in June and July last year to 3 125 t.

ITRI believes that the demand for tin will increase in world refined use to about 365 000 t in 2013. Thereafter, a global growth rate of about 2% a year is possible, particularly if new products in energy-related applications, stainless steel and the move to lead-free solder continue.

Other than the temporary cyclical dip in 2009, worldwide tin use in tinplate has been remarkably stable at about 60 000 t/y since 2008, when ITRI published its first yearly tin-use reports.

Mokopane Iron-Ore Project
Bushveld Minerals’ iron-ore project, in Mokopane, has moved closer to its goal of defining a one-billion-ton resource target, as it proved 740-million tons of iron-ore from its P-Q zone in December last year. The company is also working towards turning the Bushveld iron-ore project into a low-cost mining operation, capable of producing more than ten-million tons a year of a combination of titaniferous-magnetite concentrate and a prereduced product.

Bushveld Minerals exploration manager Dr Luke Longridge told Mining Weekly in November that the P-Q Upper Magnetite Zone’s resource was indicated to a depth of 200 m and inferred to a depth of 400 m, while the Main Magnetite Layer was inferred.

Mining Weekly also reported that the company had sent through several applications to the Department of Mineral Resources for additional prospecting rights and that Bushveld Minerals had also started the process of identifying the parties that held prospecting rights over the identified strike extensions.

The next phase of the programme will entail exploration over these strike extensions after the prospecting rights have been acquired.

“Our priority is to maintain the momentum of our technical studies, to complete the scoping studies and to achieve our target of higher Jorc-defined resources in our iron-ore and tin projects,” concludes Mojapelo.