JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Iron and tin mineral development company Bushveld Minerals has acquired a 50% stake in the Marble Hall tin project, in Limpopo, from Acacia Resources for an initial cash payment of R2-million and future cash commitments.

The Marble Hall project, of which the remaining 50% stake is held by Lerama Resources, is located about 110 km from Bushveld’s Mokopane tin project.

Given the two projects’ proximity to each other, similar logistics could be used for both projects and a centralised tin smelter could be used to produce concentrates from both.

Besides the R2-million to be paid by Bushveld to Acacia Resources, the transaction also included a spending commitment of up to R4.3-million to take the project into prefeasibility stage and a deferred payment of R5-million that was subject to the completion of the prefeasibility studies and a decision to progress to bankable feasibility studies or development.

“We are excited about the recent addition to the Bushveld tin portfolio at a time of strong buoyancy within the tin market,” Bushveld CEO Fortune Mojapelo said. 

He added that the Marble Hall tin project would significantly boost the overall tin inventory of the company, through the addition of a high-quality asset with significant historical exploration conducted on it already.

Historical data available for the project included a prefeasibility study undertaken by Gold Fields in the 1980s.

Bushveld believed the Marble Hall project had scope for a significant shallow tin resource and the company planned to complete initial drilling by the end of the fourth quarter of this year and define a mineral resource early next year.

“This is in line with our aim to consolidate more than 50 000 t of near-surface tin assets that have the potential to be brought into production in the short term," Mojapelo said.