North Queensland-based Consolidated Tin Mines announced that it had reached agreement to acquire all the assets of partner company Snow Peak Mining in return for shares and notes which would eventually give SPM a 68% equity share in the ASX-listed company if the deal is approved by shareholders. SPM’s main asset is the one million tpy capacity Mt Garnet concentrator, which is to be converted from processing copper ore to tin ores from several orebodies nearby, notably the Gillian project, which is planned to be the first deposit mined when mining operations commence. The announcement follows close after the publication of a new resource estimate for Gillian as a further step towards the completion of a definitive feasibility study later this year. Consolidated is still hoping to begin tin production in 2015.
The Gillian deposit now has a total mineral resource of 2.53Mt @ 0.78% Sn, for total contained tin of 19,800t; this compares to the previous Resource Estimate (June 2013) of 3.60Mt @ 0.65% Sn, for total contained tin of 23,400t. The net reduction of 1.06Mt of resource at Gillian in comparison to the 2013 estimate is largely due to the removal of deeper Inferred and extrapolated inferred Mineral Resource material from the previous interpretation. This is in part offset by an increase in the overall resource grade at Gillian from 0.65% Sn to 0.78% Sn, and specifically an increase of 90,000t of measured resource to 1.20Mt @ 0.86% Sn. The new total JORC resource estimate for the Mt Garnet Project is 12.05Mt @ 0.4% Sn.
