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Cornish Tin had exploration success and won awards in 2024, but could 2025 be even bigger?

14:23, 28th January 2025
Alastair Ford
Vox Newswire
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Last year was a pretty big year for Cornish Tin.

And, unlike many unsung junior miners who fly under everybody’s radar, Cornish Tin did at least achieve some recognition for its achievements. 

First off, in June 2024, at the Cornish Mining conference, it won an award for discovery of the year.

Fast forward to six months later, and the company won again, this time at the Resourcing Tomorrow conference, or Mines and Money as it used to be known.

One accolade may be luck or favour, but two is a pattern.

So, what’s behind it?

Before we get to the answer to that question, it’s worth noting that Cornish Tin is a privately-held company, based in the UK and backed by some well-known names in the industry. It’s run by Sally Norcross-Webb, a mining lawyer with many years of experience operating in Cornwall, with co-director Clive Newall, the man who built First Quantum up into one of the world’s leading copper companies.

Its private status means that it doesn’t get battered by the slings and arrows of market sentiment, and that over the past few years it has been free to get on with work on the ground untroubled  by the teething issues like liquidity, volume, short-selling which bedevil other comparable companies that are listed. 

This alone makes Cornish Tin stand out from the crowd, and makes it look stable and well run compared to the state of permanent panic that runs through the board rooms of less fortunate companies.

So, the company has poise. 

That’s a good place to start when dishing out an award.

But what else?

Now we get to the assets. 

Norcross-Webb founded Cornish Tin in 2017 on the basis of the Great Wheal Vor project. 

The idea is simple enough: make Cornish mining great again. Like many parts of Cornwall, Great Wheal Vor was, in the past, subject to fairly intensive, and highly profitable mining. Even so, there was a lot the old-timers couldn’t, and didn’t do, and in the latter part of the twentieth century there was also a collapse in tin prices to contend with.

By the turn of the twenty-first century Great Wheal Vor - like its near-neighbour South Crofty and other famous Cornish projects – was out in the cold. 

But some people – like Norcross-Webb, knew that the project still had plenty to offer. And she’s spent the better part of the last five years proving it.

During the course of several extensive work programmes, including major drilling campaigns, Cornish Tin has been able to establish that not only does its ground remain highly prospective for tin – and at high grades – but it’s also prospective for hard-rock lithium.

Back in 2017, such thinking was only viable at a conceptual level. But eight years later, it’s now established geological fact – hence the awards.

But it’s not just the re-awakening of dormant projects that’s been so eye-catching. The work Cornish Tin undertook between 2022 and 2024 has begun to indicate that the extent of the resource still in the ground at Great Wheal Vor could be very significant indeed. 

More drilling is likely to get underway in the early part of this year, so we’ll know more in a few months, but on the basis of what’s already known a case can be made that the mineralized area underneath the historic Great Wheal Vor could be three times the size of the old workings. 

That mouth-watering prospect is supported by one intercept that hit mineralization over 155.4 metres. That this hole also intercepted at its base what’s known as the G5 granite only adds to the interest – G5 granite is a prerequisite for hardrock lithium in Cornwall.

And what about that lithium? – well, according to recent work carried out by Wardell Armstrong, Cornish Tin’s lithium resource could be larger than Zinnwald’s, and might indeed end up being larger than Cinovec. 

Such a large strategic resource located securely inside the UK could be a game-changer for a government currently scrambling around for a coherent critical minerals strategy.

So, 2025 should be a busy year for Cornish Tin. The plan is to drill five tin targets in the earlier part of the year, and then move onto the lithium in the later part. To pay for it, the company is raising £3 million via its private networks and through Crowdcube. Thus far, each raise the company has done has been at a higher value than the previous one. And investors might want to note that EIS relief is also available.

It’s an award-winning, UK success story. At a time when good news is hard to find, what’s not to like?

 

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