The Tin Market comments on the Wa State in Myanmar situation makes for very interesting reading.
China has sucked the life out of the Wa State and now that they've realised it, they've announced the suspension of mining by 1 August 2023.
The document released on 15th April 2023 by the Wa State Central Economic Planning Commission said, “in order to protect the remaining mineral resources in Wa State in a timely manner, all mining and excavation of mineral resources are suspended until mature mining conditions are in place”.
My take is that, Wa have been fools on the world Tin stage. Not only were they not making any real money at these low Tin prices (nobody is) but they have all but depleted any advantage that they may have had. By at least protecting what reserves remain, they may believe that they can redeem some pride but in reality they may have missed the big green Tin future that is upon us. Now that we head into a 5th year of supply deficits.
Background: Wa is a major tin mining district in Myanmar, and sources a significant portion of concentrate for China, the world’s largest refined tin producer. In 2022, almost two-thirds of China’s imported tin-in-concentrate came from Myanmar, totalling 48,000 tonnes. About 40,000 tonnes of this came from the country’s mine production, of which 70% is estimated to have come from Wa State. An additional 8,000 tonnes came from Wa government stockpiles during the record tin prices in early 2022.
As stated in the Wa document, the rationale for the move is to formalise mining, in which case we might expect some restriction of supply until this is achieved. Mines with existing licenses will have three months to adapt to the new requirements. See ITA full story.
Based on SRZ’s current reported resources in the graph below, SRZ’s bubble is only going to get bigger once all the drilling and assays come in from the Phase 2B drilling program. After all, they now understand the geology better and have targeted potentially the largest and higher grade-thickness zones of all the deposits. Therefore, once those results are incorporated into the Mineral Resource Estimate update later in the year, that bubble could be floating away all on its own.
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