It is well documented that Australian Tin Mining’s (ANW) Taronga mine contains the 5th largest tin resource globally via the 57,000t contained tin resource, with an additional 26,000t and 4.4m oz silver (JORC 2012). It is also well known that there are similar sheeted vein systems at prospects surrounding Taronga such as Great Britain, Poverty Point, Pound Flat and McDonalds (refer figure 1 below). These prospects have been under-explored to date and have the potential to add resource upside to the feasibility of the Taronga Project.
Figure 1: ANW tenements in the Emmaville and Torrington Region, New England Belt - Northern NSW. (Note ANW merged with Taronga mines in 2013)
Source: ANW ASX Announcement 23/02/21 ‘PositiveIndications in Tin Projects Re-evaluation’
It appears what hasn’t been widely appreciated is that Taronga and ANW’s surrounding tenements at Emmaville and Torrington are directly adjacent to Thomson Resources (TMZ) Webbs Silver project as shown in the location map of the Webbs Silver project found on the TMZ website (refer figure 2 below).
Figure 2: Location of Webbs Silver project in northern NSW indicating proximity to the Taronga Tin Project owned by ANW.
Source: TMZ websiteThe Webbs Silver Project has the “highest grade undeveloped silver project in Australia” (Source: TMZ ASX Announcement 11/12/20).
Thomson Resources (TMZ) is currently finalising the acquisition of Webbs Silver project from Silver Mines Limited (SVL) and the existing 2004 JORC resource is 1.49Mt @ 345g/t Ag Eq for a contained metal resource of 16 million oz silver equivalent.
The Webbs Silver project is located on a single tenement, namely EL 5674 (Source: SVL ASX announcement 30/09/20 - ‘Annual report to shareholders’). Further investigations reveal the precise location of the EL 674 tenement in relation to the ANW Taronga mine (EL 8407) and the surrounding ANW Emmaville/Torrington tenements (refer figure 3 below).
Figure 3: Location of TMZ’s Webbs Silver project (EL 5674) and tenement EL8407 (containing ANW’s Taronga Tin Mine in red) and additional ANW tenements EL 8335, EL 7800 and EL 7801.
Source: MinView website - Mining, Exploration and Geoscience - NSW GovernmentThe proximity of ANW’s tenements to the “highest grade undeveloped silver project in Australia” is compelling. ANW’s tenements encompass the northern, eastern and southern boundaries of TMZ’s Webb silver project located at the relatively small EL 5674 tenement. It is indeed surprising that the western boundary of EL 5674 has not already been pegged, and it is astonishing that ANW management have not referred to the proximity of the Webbs Silver project to ANW tenements in any announcements to market. Unfortunately, as many investors are aware, management have not covered themselves in glory.
Some further information about the Webbs Silver project reveals:
- Using historical techniques from 1884 to 1901 approximately 55,000t of ore was mined at Webbs with an average grade of at least 23oz/t silver.
- According to TMZ’s ASX announcement dated 12/11/20, the Webbs Silver Project tenement contains ‘several down-plunge extensions that require testing for drilling and the remainder of the tenement is largely underexplored’.
- The wider region contains ‘extensive mineralisation with over 2,000 separate mineral occurrences’ (Source: SVL ASX announcement 30/09/20 - ‘Annual report to shareholders’).
The above information demonstrates that the Taronga Tin mine and surrounding ANW tenements in the Emmaville/Torrington region should be perceived as containing significant explorative exposure to silver prospectivity as well as the primary tin prospectivity already documented.
The significant prospectivity is in addition to the already defined existing tin, copper and silver resource at the Taronga Tin Mine and strengthens the investment potential for ANW in an environment of heightened tin and silver demand.
