Tin gets its groove back as Sky Metals unleashes ore sorter magic on historic NSW mine

An historic tin camp in New South Wales is getting a second life — and this time, it’s riding shotgun with a next-gen XRT sorter that’s doing the heavy lifting.

At the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up, Sky Metals’ managing director Oliver Davies unpacked a compelling case for why the Tallebung Tin Project could become one of the lowest-cost tin producers on the ASX: a shallow orebody, ideal liberation characteristics, and near-zero processing complexity.

“We’re incredibly fortunate,” Davies told delegates. “This is the best ore we’ve ever tested for sorting — we’re talking up to 44x grade uplift in testwork using TOMRA’s XRT unit. We’re losing about 15–20 percent of the tin in that extreme mode, but for a project targeting rapid low-cost production, that’s a trade we’ll take”.

The feedstock in question is cassiterite-heavy mineralisation hosted in quartz and sandstone — perfect contrast for density- and attenuation-based rejection. Bulk ore sorting trials have already achieved over 98 percent mass rejection in conservative mode, taking ROM grades from 0.15 percent Sn to +0.70 percent Sn in a single pass.

Sky is now scaling its ore sorting trials into pilot gravity flowsheet testing, with 100kg of high-purity tin concentrate to be produced from bulk samples collected onsite. No chemicals, no flotation, just density and gravity — a metallurgist’s dream. “It’s an elegant circuit,” Davies said. “Simple plant. Low energy. Low footprint. Fast payback.”

Originally mined from the 1890s to 1980s, the Tallebung site retains power, road, and legacy water access infrastructure, and benefits from its status as a historically disturbed site. Sky’s already 18 months into environmental baseline work, with groundwater bores and biodiversity studies well advanced.

From an orebody perspective, the resource is growing in all directions. The current MRE (January 2024) stands at 15.6Mt @ 0.15% Sn, but recent hits like 11m @ 1.02% Sn and 10m @ 0.69% Sn — both near surface — are outside the defined envelope and trending into open extensions.

The team is mid-campaign on a multi-rig drill-out designed to build tonnage, lift the average grade, and hone in on shallow high-grade pods for early cashflow. “Our goal is to convert these shallow zones into fast-return mining scenarios. It’s not about building a monster — it’s about building margin,” Davies said.

What sets this project apart is its alignment of geology and technology. As Davies put it: “We didn’t go looking for an ore sorting story — the rock gave us one. Our job now is to optimise around that advantage.”

With China’s domestic tin production falling, Indonesian output down 33 percent in 2024, and the DRC’s largest tin mine briefly offline due to conflict, Davies sees supply chain insecurity working in the project’s favour.

“This is a metal that’s critical to solder, solar, and semiconductors. You can’t replace it — and it’s in everything,” he said. “When tin goes to $100,000 a tonne, your iPhone’s not more expensive. But your margins — if you’re producing clean, ethical tin — just got a lot better.”

The next milestone: assay results from the current drill program, followed by an updated MRE and early-stage mine studies in Q2 2025.