Military Metals (CSE:MILI) is taking an increasing interest in its Medvedi-Potok tin property in Slovakia amid a rising commodity price environment for the key metal.
While the company has been focused on its 100% owned flagship Trojarová antimony-gold project to date, Military Metals is updating the market on its Medvedi-Potok tin property, which similar to Trojarová, and is host to a Soviet era historical tin resource.
Like antimony, tin is an important critical metal with numerous and widespread uses in metal coatings (tin cans), solder, electronics, glass and automobile manufacturing, optical touch screens and more. Most production is very tightly controlled by a few East Asian countries, principally China, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
Military Metals CEO Scott Eldridge believes the tin asset has great potential to generate significant value.
“Tin prices are once again on the rise as its strategic importance as a unique critical metal becomes more apparent. Medvedi-Potok is one of the three Slovakian properties acquired by the company last year, including our flagship antimony asset, Trojarová,” says Eldridge.
“Tin, a key metal with numerous industrial and high-tech applications is one where global production is controlled by just a few countries, similar to antimony. We look forward to completing a detailed review of the abundant historical data on this property and then formulating a plan to advance it in a manner that will bring maximum value to our shareholders.”
Global tin prices are expected to remain at elevated levels in 2025, with some analysts forecasting the commodity to average US$32,000 ($50,328) per tonne this year. According to Trading Economics, tin futures rose to a near three-year high of US$36,000 in March before easing to US$35,250 “as geopolitical distress hampered the outlook for supply”.
Military Metals’ Medvedi-Potok tin project comprises an exploration license of 437 hectares in size, located in eastern Slovakia just west of the village of Hnilec and 20km north of Rozñava, a known mining town and former centre of this region’s historical mining industry.
Military Metals’ second antimony-gold property, Tiennesgrund, where tungsten values have been historically reported as well, is located 20km southeast of Medvedi-Potok, and 20km northeast of Rozñava. The company from which this property was acquired carried out very limited work but its initial due diligence work has provided basic information about the property.
Discovered in 1971 by the former Czechoslovak Geological Survey pursuant to a soil geochemical survey, extensive exploration and development was completed over the following decade, including: 36 trenches; 47 diamond drillholes from surface; 5.3km of underground development on two levels each with its own portal; 82 diamond drillholes from the underground workings; numerous studies including resource estimates, engineering studies, petrographic reports and metallurgical studies.
Digital copies of all six volumes of these studies and reports comprising several thousand pages are in the company’s possession and will soon be digested by Military Metals’ Slovak technical team in sufficient detail to ensure that all relevant information is captured and translated into English, with all spatial data properly georeferenced and placed into an integrated GIS (Geographical Information System) database so that these data may be used to better understand and advance the property.
Mineralisation at Medvedi-Potok is characteristic of a typical intrusive-hosted “greisened” tin deposit featuring a combination of higher tin grades in a series of narrow tin-bearing quartz veins within a larger halo of lower grade, disseminated and stockwork style tin mineralisation in hydrothermally altered, or “greisened” granite.
Historically estimated mineralization here was classified as C2 within the Soviet era Russian classification system in use at that time – 858,394 tonnes at an average grade of 0.198% tin. The cut-off grade remains unknown.
The C2 category is most similar to inferred resources under the Western classification system, as defined by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM).
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: Military Metals
