Development and utilization outlook of tin ore shows no optimism

Asian Metal: Hi Mr. Zhou, thank you for accepting the interview of Asian Metal. Firstly, please give us a brief introduction of your company.

Mr. Zhou: Our company, founded in 2008 and located in 101 Mining Area, Anchui Town, Rongshui County, Liuzhou City, Guangxi Province, mainly engages in mine product procession with a daily designed handling capacity of 300t. We mainly process raw ore with tin content at more than 0.5% and output 250 metal tons and 500 metal tons of tin concentrate 40%min and zinc concentrate per year respectively. We have 350 employees and the pure benefit is more than RMB10 million.

Asian Metal: I suppose you have entered the tin industry for many years, would you like to make an outline about China’s tin ore resources?

Mr. Zhou: The world's tin resources are mainly distributed in the East Pacific tin belt, Western Pacific tin belt, Southeast Asian tin belt, Eurasian tin belt, and African tin belt. China's proved (reserved) tin resources are concentrated in Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Hunan, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Guangdong and other provinces. The minable resources are mainly controlled by a handful of mining enterprises, such as Yunnan Tin Group, China-Tin Group , Baogang Group, etc.

Asian Metal: What’s the tin ore distribution and utilization in Guangxi? And is the place still affected by environmental inspections?

Mr. Zhou: There are 45 tin ore properties in Guangxi which are mainly distributed in Hechi City with the reserves accounting for 77.84% of the total. In addition, Guilin and Liuzhou have some distributions of reserves, accounting for 7.06% and 6.59% repectively. Of these, 11 properties have been evaluated since 1988, which are concretely distributed in Bali- Longtoushan mountain area of Dachang Town Nandan County, the east side of the lower part of No. 100 ore body of Dachang, Chehe Town of Nandan County, Anchhui Town of Rongshui County, the southeast side of Limu Mine of Gongcheng County etc.

Tin ore in Guangxi is able to be explored successfully as it is in a certain size. It needs integration of several mines to obtain a mining permit certificate with a processing plant built at most, which belongs to co-movement of exploration and affects the utilization efficiency of mine to some extent.

The exploration of tin ore resources in Guangxi is obviously affected by environmental protection issue currently, which is the key factor to the delay of resumption for many tin ore mines.

Asian Metal: What is the biggest bottleneck in developing and utilizing Guangxi tin ore resources at present? And what are the prospects for future development?

Mr. Zhou: Firstly, the current tin price does not completely reflect its value, which causes some negative impact on the tin industry, making tin exploration out of power; secondly, the recovery rate of ore dressing is the main restriction to the development of mine. With no reliable technological support at present, the cost of mining is big, and our recovery rate is only about 50%; thirdly, staff crisis has become increasingly prominent as now more and more young generations are unwilling to engage in mineral processing work; fourth, each country attaches more importance to environmental protection, which greatly makes development more difficult and the cost higher.

If the mineral processing technology does not improve significantly in the future, quite a few mines will be forced to shut down inevitably by policy under persistently heavy environmental protection pressure; besides, with tin resource in a decreasing trend, the resource crisis is approaching.

Asian Metal: With current tin price hovering at around RMB140,000/t, I am wondering whether it will have active impact on the mine development or not for your company, a qualified mine developing company?

Mr. Zhou: The price is mostly above the production cost for mining companies national widely, but the profit cannot support the further expense for exploration of tin ore resources. So the current tin ore resources in process are mainly proved ones.

Asian Metal: Please share your expectation for tin price in H2 2017.

Mr. Zhou: With oversupply of finished products, the discount of tin price raises to RMB5,000/t in the spot market currently. Supported by a great deal of imports of Burmese tin ore, the raw material market sees normal supply. SHFE furthers tin price has not exceeded the previous high point of RMB157,000/t so far this year, so tin ore price is expected to vibrate in the range of RMB135,000-145,000/t in the coming one or two months under downward pressure.

Asian Metal: Thank you once again for accepting the interview of us. Wish your company a better future!