Sky Metals widens high-grade mineralised zone at historical Tallebung tin project

Sky Metals (ASX: SKY) has intersected shallow, high-grade tin in the first three holes of a major reverse circulation drilling campaign at its flagship Tallebung project in central New South Wales.

The holes have widened the zone of high-grade tin Sky discovered last year to the south of the current mineral resource estimate, which returned a best intersection of 11m at 1.02% tin from 54m.

Importantly, Tallebung ore sorting variability studies completed last year have shown the potential to achieve a significant and consistent upgrade of the mineralisation with high recoveries of tin.

Extra holes

Best results from the latest drilling were 6 metres at 1.01% tin from 52m including 2m at 2.54% tin from 54m, 13m at 0.33% tin from 70m including 5m at 0.74% tin from 76m and 2m at 1.10% tin from 69m.

Sky has added another 80 holes to the campaign to further explore Tallebung extensions in areas away from the historic workings and now has approximately 150 holes permitted and ready for drilling.

The company’s current work is focused on the eastern margin of the deposit, where it is targeting extensions of mineralisation which could be incorporated into the early stages of the mine plan.

True potential

Chief executive officer Oliver Davies said drilling results had opened up Tallebung in all directions, meaning the company could start to uncover the true potential of the extensive tin field.

“The 2.54% tin intercept equates to over 8.5% copper, with the tin price up to 3.5 times higher than current copper spot prices—this demonstrates the very high value of these intercepts and reinforces the strategic importance of the shallow extensions we are finding to the south and east of the current deposit,” he said.

Mr Davies said the company was advancing a bulk sample metallurgical program to optimise the Tallebung process flowsheet and produce marketable tin concentrates to assist in offtake negotiations.

Global tin demand

Tallebung is an open-pit near-term project Sky has positioned to feed the rapidly expanding global demand for tin, which is essential to semiconductor, electronic and solar photovoltaic technologies.

The project is located at the site of large-scale historical tin mining in central NSW, where tin was first discovered in the 1890s.

Sky is progressively defining a large-scale hard-rock resource at Tallebung, with higher-grade zones on the margins of the known deposit and positive metallurgical performance across the entire acreage.