AfriTin Mining Limited (AIM: ATM), an African tin mining company with its flagship asset, the Uis Tin Mine (“Uis”) in Namibia, is pleased to provide an operational update.
Highlights:
▪ Strict COVID-19 mitigation measures remain in place across the Company to safeguard the workforce and, to date, no confirmed cases have been reported at the Uis Tin Mine.
▪ Modifications to address the bottlenecks in the fines dewatering circuit of the processing plant have been completed; and,
▪ Despite shutdowns due to implementation of the plant improvements, production of tin concentrate for August 2020 increased to 37.5 tonnes.
The health, safety and well-being of our employees, contractors and the local community are of utmost importance to the Company. As previously announced, strict COVID-19 mitigation measures have been implemented across the Company and all necessary steps have been taken to safeguard workforce. The Company is pleased to report that there are still no confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Uis Tin Mine.
Modifications to address bottlenecks in the fines dewatering circuit of the Uis processing plant are now complete. As a result of higher than anticipated fines material in the run-of-mine feed, improvements were required to rebalance material flows and expand capacity related to the dewatering of grits (45 to 500 micron particles) and slimes (smaller than 45 micron particles). It is anticipated that these improvements will translate into increased concentrator plant throughput from September 2020 onwards.
Due to the implementation of these improvements, an extended maintenance shutdown of 4 days was required during August 2020. Despite this, monthly production of tin concentrate from the Phase 1 mining and processing facility increased to 37.5 tonnes of tin concentrate for the month, extending production gains made during June and July 2020. The monthly production performance for 2020 is tabulated below. For Stage I of Phase 1, the Company is targeting the processing of 45,000 tonnes of ore per month, at a rate of 80 tonnes per hour, for the production of 60 tonnes of tin concentrate per month.
With the main bottlenecks addressed, the Company will focus on improving the availability and utilisation of the plant to support the remainder of the production ramp-up. This includes additional instrumentation and controls, optimisation of piping and valving configurations, refining the density control in the dense medium separation circuits, and installing an on-site laboratory.
Regular shipment of tin concentrate continues from Walvis Bay, despite ongoing COVID-19 restrictions in Namibia and South Africa. Tin concentrate production for the year to date totals 150 tonnes.
Table 1: Monthly performance from the Uis Phase 1 pilot plant during 2020.
Description | Units | 2020 | |||||||
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr * | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | ||
Plant Availability | % | 59% | 60% | 64% | 59% | 65% | 69% | 73% | 72% |
Plant Utilisation | % | 58% | 66% | 68% | 54% | 70% | 76% | 88% | 81% |
Plant Processing Rate | tonnes per hour | 45 | 51 | 52 | 41 | 48 | 49 | 65 | 70 |
Ore Processed | tonnes | 11,420 | 14,043 | 16,866 | 9,618 | 16,217 | 18,551 | 31,324 | 30,872 |
Tin Concentrate | tonnes | 11.4 | 11.0 | 12.3 | 11.1 | 11.2 | 19.7 | 35.3 | 37.5 |
Tin Contained in Concentrate | tonnes | 7.4 | 7.1 | 8.4 | 7.7 | 7.2 | 12.6 | 22.7 | 25.6 |
* Operations curtailed due to COVID-19 government lockdown regulations
Change of Broker
The Company advises that Novum Securities has ceased to act as broker to the Company with immediate effect.
Anthony Viljoen, CEO of AfriTin Mining Limited commented:
“We are pleased to have completed the bottleneck modifications to the dewatering circuit on our plant and to have extended the production increases of the past three months. We will now look to leverage these circuit improvements to reach our Stage I production target of 60 tonnes of concentrate per month in Q4 of 2020.”
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