AfriTin Mining finishes construction of its Phase 1 Expansion plant
AfriTin, a tin producer in Namibia, has been producing tin from the Uis mine in Namibia since November 2019. The initial Phase 1 processing plant was designed to prove the viability of operations, with annual production rates capped at 720 tonnes tin concentrate.
Uis has now been in steady-state operations for over a year and a half, and so AfriTin has been looking to expand its production. Work on the Phase 1 Expansion project began in March 2022 and has been completed on schedule.
The expansion project upgraded the crushing, screening, and concentrate cleaning circuits, as well as debottlenecking constraints in the concentrator. Combined, the Phase 1 Expansion project should allow AfriTin to increase production to some 1,200 tonnes of tin concentrate per year, a 67% improvement.
Construction now complete, the company is now looking to commission the upgraded plant over the next four months. The dry plant (crushing and screening) will be commissioned from August, with the wet plant (concentrator) following from September. The process has been designed to minimise disruptions; stockpiling and flexibility in the existing circuit means that commissioning is unlikely to have a material impact on production at Uis.
The company is also working hard to begin producing lithium and tantalum by-products at Uis. Pilot plants have been progressed to the detailed engineering stage, with a further update expected in Q4 this year.
AfriTin‘s small-scale start-up plan for Uis is progressing well. The Phase 1 expansion of the processing plant is the second step towards becoming a globally significant tin producer, with output of tin-in-concentrate increasing to 720 tonnes annually. Work for Phase 2 is already underway, with results of a Preliminary Economic Assessment having been announced in April this year.
