Van Dieman Mines plc, the London AIM market listed company with a number of tin projects in Tasmania, has announced updates on its plans in the last week. The company’s 700 tpy capacity Scotia operation will commence production “around the turn of the year”, followed by the Endurance project in the second half of 2008 and the Great Northern Plains project the year after. Each of the later start-ups is expected to roughly double tin production volumes. Both the Scotia and Endurance operations will also produce sapphires.
Van Dieman had experienced considerable permitting delays in the planned development of Scotia, but has carried out more exploration work during the delay.
Managing Director Clive Trist commented: "I am very pleased with the progress that we have made in developing the resource base. We have one mine about to commence production with two others scheduled to come on-stream in 2008 and 2009. We are continually adding to our knowledge of the resource, which now has an in-situ value of over A$1.3 billion, and expect to be in a position to further increase the JORC (resource) figure later this year".
Chairman Michael Spriggs told shareholders at last week’s company AGM that a secondary fundraising exercise was being considered to fund the projects.
