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Thomson takes a turn at tin drilling in the Lachlan Fold Belt
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With tin stocks still severely constrained, the timing seems right for Thomson to start drilling at its Bygoo project in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt.
The London Metals Exchange currently has less than 2,000t of tin in its warehouses, less than two days’ stocks at the global consumption rate of about 1,000t per day.
While prices have slipped from the recent high of $US29,561/t ($37,750/t), they are still trading above the $US25,000/t mark.
This segues neatly into Thomson Resources’ (ASX:TMZ) mobilising a drill rig to carry out resource and extensional drilling at the Bygoo tin project after completing drilling at the Mallee Hen gold project.
Drilling will assist the company in defining a resource for the project along with testing extensions of the known mineralisation.
Should time permit, the rig will then move to carry out a follow-up drilling program at the Bald Hill tin prospect.
The company is also waiting on assays from the Mallee Hen drilling, which consisted of seven holes totalling 759m, that intersected several zones of strong quartz veining.
Bygoo tin project
Bygoo was acquired by the company in 2015 and is located within EL 8260 that is north of the Harry Smith gold project and surrounds the Ardlethan tin deposit that produced over 31,500t of the metal until 1986.
While there are several early 20th century shallow tin workings scattered up to 10km north and south of Ardlethan, few of these have been tested with modern exploration.
Previous drilling by Thomson had discovered five new tin greisens; three at Bygoo North and others at Big Bygoo and Bald Hill.
Results from this earlier drilling include 35m grading 2.1 per cent tin from 50m down-hole, 20m at 1.2 per cent tin from 56m and 8m at 1.2 per cent tin from 16m.
In 2016, the company estimated a conceptual exploration target of 0.9Mt to 1.44Mt grading 0.8 per cent to 1.4 per cent tin.
At Bald Hill, historical workings extend over 1km of strike with multiple shallow pits and shafts along with drilling by Thomson that returned a top hit of 15m at 0.4 per cent tin from a depth of 19m.
Those drilling and radar surveys carried out in 2017 led the company to believe that the southern end of the Bald Hill field had potential for significant tin mineralisation.
This article was developed in collaboration with Thomson Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
