Canadian company Montero Mining
recently released results of its drilling
campaign that targeted the old tailings
dams on the AfriTin Mining licence at
the Uis tin mine for lithium. It revealed an
encouraging resource of lithium that was
never previously processed at the mining
operation. Viljoen and AfriTin, in the
meantime, have acquired additional mining
licenses in the general area of Uis, including
two exploration licenses for the Brandberg
West tin and tungsten mine and a license in
the Goantagab belt, not too far north of the
Uis project. Exploration and mining activity
in the region continue ramping up, and as
demand for tin, tungsten, and tantalum
increases, Uis might just return to its glory
days. Both Bisie, in the DRC, and AfriTin’s
phase one at Uis, will be at full tilt this year,
and the tin, tungsten, and tantalum space is
without a doubt one to keep an eye on.
White pegmatite for Africa
Mining Mirror visited the Uis project last
year with Tim Marais, exploration manager
for AfriTin Mining, and found an endless
stretch of white pegmatites with black tin
spots, fascinating old mine workings, signs of
artisanal activity, and a historical town maybe
not entirely ready for a mining revival.
Tin has been mined in the Uis region of
Namibia since the early 1920s. The Uis Tin
Mining Company was established in 1951
and seven years later, the South African
government-owned mining company Iscor
started mining the deposit until it closed
again in 1991. Since then, the town has
become a tourist attraction and, strangely
enough, a retirement village for foreign and
local elderly people. Numerous tailings dams
and mining pits, created by the Iscor activity,
flank the old town.
An old crusher with rocks still in it, paints
the sad picture of a full-blown mining
operation in its prime that suddenly, and
calamitously, had to cut the power supply.
But between the dust, historical pits, blasted
rock, and three-decades-old drilling holes,
lies lots of new opportunity. AfriTin acquired
the mining rights for the Uis deposit through
a local company called Guineafowl in 2016
and has since pushed full-steam ahead to get
the mine up and running again. A host of
smaller companies and operations attempted
to undertake mining in the area since 2004,
but none ever delivered on their promises,
until now. When Mining Mirror interviewed
Anthony Viljoen, CEO of AfriTin, last
year, he was adamant that the company will
deliver the goods and become a full-blown
mining company — and he delivered on his
promise of concentrate production expected
in Q2 2019.
An abundance of pegmatites
On site, Marais explains that pegmatites are
actually coarse-grained crystals, and not a
rock type. At Uis, one can clearly see the tin
deposits within these pegmatites, as Marais
points them out. “When we arrived on site
initially, we had to confirm that what we saw
was actually tin, as it doesn’t normally occur
in such coarse-grained deposits as with other
pegmatite-hosted tin deposits. We didn’t
require exploration drilling before making the
decision; it is all here at surface — you can
actually see the tin, coupled with a historical
resource produced by Iscor,” says Marais.
As we wind our way down through the
blasted debris into the V2 pit, the pegmatite
is visible everywhere on the big, open exposed
face in front of us, and the chances are good
that it continues underground. “It is not a
question of whether there are pegmatites;
the question is just how many pegmatites
there are,” says Marais. All the main open
pits were developed by Iscor, and since they
left in the 1990s, there has been no other
large-scale mining in the area. Iscor left
almost overnight. A mapping programme
carried out last year delineated an additional
180 unmined pegmatites within 5km of the
pilot plant.
There are still blastholes ready to be
drilled in the ground, and ore still remains
in the decrepit crusher. Looking over the
old workings from a vantage point near
the V2 pit, the lithium-bearing dumps
are undoubtedly visible. Apart from Dr
Tony Harwood and Montero’s recently
released results, an Australian company
called Tawana Resources drilled and tested
the dumps in 2015/16 and came up with
positive results. They found, however, that
the grades are not high enough to justify
a stand-alone lithium project. Marais says
AfriTin is initially focusing on the tin and
tantalum opportunities and will investigate
the lithium as part of the ongoing
exploration programme. Additionally,
AfriTin has recently announced the
discovery of lithium on one of its other
mining licenses in the area.
The Uis pegmatites are 8m and 60m thick
at surface, which makes the Uis Mine one
of the largest (by volume) tin deposits in
the world; although, as mentioned before,
the grades might not be as significant as
the majority of tin deposits that are mostly
One of the 16 open pits mined by Iscor in the 1990s.
[16] MINING MIRROR MAY 2019
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