east pilbara tantaum and tin at e45 2459

The company, on friday, announced it's significant program of exploration, which included tenement E45/2459, midway between Fortescue's mine and CBH's base metals project in the Pilbara, that Gondwana have identified as "the western shaw prospect", the target is tin and tantalum exploration . The GDA report mentions the prospectivity for VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) style mineralisation .
This tenement was not one I had noticed much information on in previous reports but it appears to have some potential.
Base metals are sometimes difficult and expensive resources to extract and I think to create some long term value in the tenement, once the collection of samples from the field trip planned for the first quarter of 2009 and the programmed exploration activity of mapping , geophysics, photo interpretation and sampling is completed, the company should have established a jv to fund the further exploration of the prospect. The company should concentrate on the most prospective of their many tenements (and I think the Corunna and Comet prospects is where the focus should be). If GDA can negotiate a jv with companies like CBH, GIP or De Grey's (etc) for the base metal assets, GDA can concentrate on the iron-ore, gold, copper etc, prospects in the Pilbara and at Parker Range. It will be interesting to see what finance the Hong Kong partners GDA has been in discussions with bring to the table for the China project/s and potentially the Australian projects Gondwana has identified in the exploration update announced last friday.
The tantalum and tin tenement ( E 45/2459) is huge ( comprising 70 Standard Blocks) and I think it is a good decision by the company to reduce the tenement by 50% to concentrate exploration on the other more prospective 50% ( the northern part ?).

From the GIP home page....."Tantalum metal powder is an indispensable intermediate for the production of capacitors without which modern cell phones, laptops or flat screens would not be possible. HC Starck in particular is a specialist for high capacitance tantalum powders which are above all indispensable for the latest generation of modern electronic appliances. Tantalum metal is also an essential metal in the production of high temperature applications such as jet engine turbine blades. Tantalum has a high level of bio-acceptability which makes it the preferred metal of medical implants (orthopaedics). Due to its extreme resistance to acid corrosion it is used in chemical plant and equipment."

There's plenty of info on the internet about tin but the price has increased in the last month from $22,245/ton 11th June 08 to $23,090/ton 11th July 08 ( London Metals Exchange cash price).