RE: Uis question20 Jan 2019 13:23
Hi bloater, you need to look at a map, the UIS area is huge.. ATM have a number of licences in the UIs area but there are other miners with other licences too. ATM did buy TI last year which added licences in Brandberg West (quite close to UIs). That is also mainly tin, tungsten and maybe a little copper and gold.
Being in the tin market is the main driver of ‘Afritin’ with building their own African tin smelting plant an aspiration too (to save it being shipped to Malaysia and Indonesia for processing before coming back). A 10000T mining and processing operation would just get them into the top 10 in the world (mind you the biggest, in China is a 75000T monster)..
Being able to mind and process 10000T of tin at an expected price of $25000 per ton, $12,000 gross profit per ton, is enough for me at this stage. Tin is a growing technology mineral with potentially much bigger demand even than Lithium. Afritin will have a captive market in the African growing battery and technology market.
Different minerals are all lucrative in their own way but all tend be mined separately, hence why BMN, a Vanadium miner, spun out Afritin. I suspect if Afritin found sufficient mineral, gold etc they would probably find an off take partner rattler than mining it themselves.
As CC said below there are firms, such as Montero, that specialise in reprocessing the tailings to look for overlooked minerals. ATM would probably also to look to sell the rights to process the tailings rather than going off on a tangent.