Andrada Mining says processed tin ore at its Uis Tin Mine increased by 60% year-on-year to 915 599 tonnes, while tin concentrate production increased by 54% to 1 474 tonnes in the period ended February 29, 2024.
The company says this is due to the plant processing rate in 2023, which increased by 29% year-on-year to 137tph.
Annual tin concentrate production increased by 54% to 1,474 tonnes, resulting in a 51% increase in contained tin to 885 tonnes year-on-year.
Contained tin tonnage produced in the fourth quarter increased by 14%, a higher rate than the 7% increase in tin concentrate, due to tantalum concentrate separation.
The tantalum extraction increased the tin concentrate grade by 16% between December 2023 and February 2024.
Andrada Mining says it completed the circuit optimisation, which resulted in the production of 7.4 tonnes of tantalum concentrate during the fourth quarter.
The current concentrate production rate is 48tpa and is expected to increase to approximately 83tpa after the ore-sorting facility is implemented.
The company is on track to supply tantalum to AfriMet on a quarterly basis, commencing March 2024.
The revenue from the tantalum concentrate is anticipated to increase total group revenue by between 3% and 5%.
Andrada Mining says approximately 40 tonnes of saleable, technical-grade lithium concentrate was produced and stockpiled by the end of the reporting period.
The production rate is expected to increase to 100 tonnes per month by the end of March 2024.
Internal test work confirms that this technical-grade material meets the specifications for the glass-ceramics market, and Andrada is exploring additional offtake agreements with both industrial and battery chemical markets.
According to Andrada Mining, all unit costs were at the lower level of management guidance for the entire year.
Andrada Mining CEO Anthony Viljoen says the strategic and operational initiatives have been successful and yielded further double-digit percentage increases in production tonnage at our operations, which we are presenting today.
“Although the higher stripping resulted in an increase in the AISC during the year, the exposure of the orebody’s grade, diversity of minerals including lithium, and scale at depth according to our geological model, will start to become glaringly apparent, placing the operations in a robust position to capitalise on the rebound in the commodities markets for all our products,” Viljoen says.
