Hot on the heels of the Venture Minerals moving into iron ore production at Mount Riley in Tasmania , the company has once again cranked up the drill rig at its nearby Mount Lindsay tin-tungsten deposit. Mount Lindsay is one of the largest undeveloped tin deposits in the world and with a number of tin mines across the globe now entering their twilight years end-users are starting to scrabble for new supply, sending the price of the strategic metal north.
Tin has long been regarded as an industrial metal however it is being increasingly utilised as part of the growing electric vehicle revolution. The silver metal is finding a place in a range of vehicle and electrical components in addition to being a critical lithium-ion battery input.
Since 2016 the price of tin has more than doubled and is now trading at close to US$30,000 a tonne, or three-times the price of the metal of the moment, copper, which is trading at an all-time high around US$10,000 per tonne.
Recent work by Venture Minerals has now identified a new, potentially high-grade target on the western side of the Mount Lindsay tenure, with geochemical sampling and an electromagnetic survey highlighting the drill target along strike from the major Renison tin mine.
Venture Minerals Managing Director, Andrew Radonjic said:“With record tin prices it’s a great time to be drilling our recently identified high priority tin target along strike to Renison Bell, one of the world’s largest and highest-grade tin mines.”
“Tin is a critical EV metal, and the discovery of another tin deposit will only add to the highly credentialled Mount Lindsay tin-tungsten project, which already contains one of the largest undeveloped tin deposits in the world. Mount Lindsay has the potential to become the flagship asset for the company and once developed could supply responsibly sourced tin to the EV revolution.”
Venture Minerals’ Mount Lindsay tin tenure, about 20 kilometres north of the town of Zeehan, sits within a world-class province that also hosts the famed Savage River iron ore mine, Renison and the Rosebery zinc-copper-lead operations.
A fertile 20km of strike at Mt Lindsay boasts a wealth of mineralisation including the now operational Riley iron ore mine, the Livingstone hematite deposit and the Mount Lindsay tin-tungsten deposit.
Mount Lindsay is only 15km north-west of Renison and appears to be hosted in a similar geological environment to the Metals X deposit. Renison remains one of the largest and highest-grade tin mines in the world and has produced more than 230,000 tonnes of the metal and still has more than 290,000 tonnes of tin in resources.
Venture’s Mount Lindsay deposit is no poor relation.
The company’s most recent resource outlined more than 45 million tonnes of material containing 81,000t of tin and 32,000t of tungsten. Management now wants to add to that total and the company has identified four near-mine targets it sees as having potential to host repetitions of the Mount Lindsay system.
This could catapult Venture’s project into the same enviable class as Renison.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
