ASX-listed, Venture Minerals’ tin search at its Mount Lindsay tenure in Tasmania is heating up with exploration drilling intercepting a 16m interval of sulphide rich magnetite skarn that is prospective for hosting tin mineralisation. The company is targeting extensions of the Renison Mine Sequence that contains one of the largest and highest-grade tin mines in the world some 12 kilometres along strike, the Renison Bell tin mine.
The skarn discovery follows a diamond drilling campaign which was designed to test a target area defined by a historical alluvial tin field coinciding with electromagnetic, magnetic and geochemical anomalies.
The company says the target area hosts the same carbonate units and potentially the same fault zone as Renison Bell, with Venture’s tenure covering about 10km of strike extent of the Renison Mine Sequence.
Discovered in 1890, Rension Bell has historically produced more than 130,000 tonnes of tin. Today, the mine still boasts an 18.55 million tonne resource at 1.57 per cent tin for 291,600 tonnes of contained metal. ASX-listed Metals X, with its 50 per cent stake in Renison Bell, has tabled a 10-year mine-life at the project.
Curiously, Venture says that drill hole ML337 intercepted a 150m calcsilicate alteration zone, hosting the 16m skarn interval, that is typical of the mineralisation at its whopping Mount Lindsay tin and tungsten deposit just 2km away.
The existing Mount Lindsay resource is already one of the largest undeveloped tin projects in the world with more than 80,000 tonnes of contained tin, coupled with a globally significant tungsten resource of about 3.2 million metric tonne units of tungsten trioxide.
Venture now plans to follow up on the skarn discovery with a downhole electromagnetic survey in ML337 as it looks to uncover more nearby drill-targets.
Assay results from ML337 are pending.
Venture Minerals Managing Director, Andrew Radonjic, said:“Immediate success from the first exploration drilling at Mount Lindsay since 2013, has seen the discovery of a substantial skarn system immediately along strike from one of the world’s most significant and high-grade tin mines and adjacent to Venture’s Mount Lindsay tin deposit located within Australia’s premier tin district.
The discovery of a potential new tin-bearing skarn system so close to the company’s flagship tin deposit delivers Venture an excellent opportunity to add to the already significant resource base at Mount Lindsay”.
Interestingly, the Mount Lindsay project is already categorised by the Australian Government as a ‘critical minerals project’ that could provide benefit to Australia's national interest.
Critical minerals are metals and non-metals considered vital for the economic well-being of the world's major and emerging economies.
Venture says that tin, a metal with application in the electric vehicle industry, is also registered as a critical metal by many nations around the world.
Recent research by the International Tin Association concluded that global demand for tin could soar with consumption predicted to rise from 328,400 tonnes in 2020 to some 390,000 tonnes by the end of the decade.
With the price of tin trading close to historical highs at about US$32,000 per tonne, nearly four times greater than copper, Venture will be sweating on the assays from recent drilling as it looks to unravel the full value of its Mount Lindsay tenure.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
