aus early27 Jun 2020 14:21
Tin has come a long way since 25 August 1810, when Peter Durand was granted British patent no 3,372 for coming up with tinplate containers as a means of preserving animal and vegetable food products.
Now many tin explorers include in their presentation a chart put together by Rio Tinto and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showing that, of all the metals, tin is the one most impacted by new technology — more than lithium, cobalt, silver and graphite.
Metals to be most impacted by new technologies according to Rio Tinto and MIT.
In recent months, there has been a report from a Chinese university explaining how adding tin can improve solar cell output, and other research showing how the metal can improve performance of lithium-ion batteries and water treatment technologies.
Tinplate linings of cans containing food and drinks (and other uses of tinplate) now account for just 13% of the metal’s consumption.
Solder (in electronics and electrical products, particularly) consumes 48% of tin being produced, followed by chemicals at 17%. Lead acid batteries and copper alloys are also important. Demand for tin for use as solder may be about to increase just as mine supply tightens further.
Miniaturisation in electronics is slowing while batteries in electric vehicles need tin and that sector is expected to grow substantially over the next decade.
The long, hard road to getting a tin mine into production
Australia has boxed above its weight in the past: during the high tin prices of the mid-1970s to mid-1980s Australia was one of the largest tin-producing countries in the world, yet it has only 3% of the world’s known resources.
In the past two decades, though, getting a tin mine into production has — largely — been a thankless task.
The tone in the early 2000s was set by the experience of the former Marlborough Resources.
In 2001 it shipped the first tin consignment from the revived Ardlethan mine in NSW (which had been in production from 1912 until the 1980s), but by 2004 Marlborough had gone into administration due to financial problems.
Since then, several other companies have quit the sector, and Australia’s tin ranks are now thin.
In 2013, this correspondent wrote that (at that time) there were 70 tin projects around the world which had the potential to go into production, but owners were finding that it could take decades to get from discovery to production.