The licence covers an area of approximately 19 700 hectares hosting numerous pegmatites with mineralisation including lithium, tin, tantalum and rubidium.
Petalite is considered the dominant lithium mineral present in the pegmatites. To date, we have identified 180 pegmatites over 5% of the licence and confirmed a 138 million tonnes resource for just two of these, namely the V1/V2 pegmatites.
Andrada’s medium-term target is to define a 200 million tonnes resource from these pegmatites. The flagship Uis tin and tantalum mine is highly scalable, with plans to integrate a lithium production circuit.
Ultimately, Uis has the potential to become a global lithium supplier.
| MRE Uis V1V2 Pegmatites (February 2023) | Lithium (Li₂O) | Tin (Sn) | Tantalum (Ta) |
| Grade | 0,73% | 0,15% | 86 ppm |
| Gross Resource (t) | 81 Mt | 81 Mt | 81 Mt |
| Contained Metal (t) | 1,45 Mt LCE | 120 Kt | 6,96 Kt |
The mineralised pegmatites of the Uis deposit were discovered in 1911 and worked intermittently by various owners until 1958, when the mine was acquired by Imkor Tin (Pty) Ltd (“Imkor”), a subsidiary of the South African state-owned Iscor Ltd (“Iscor”). Imkor extracted the tin concentrate and transported it to Iscor’s steel mill in South Africa for use in tinplate production.
The mine continued operating until 1990 when the closure of the operation was prompted by a depressed tin market and changes in the political and business environment for Iscor. Subsequently, apart from various failed attempts at small scale production of tin concentrate from the old mine workings, the deposit effectively lay dormant.
In 1987, three years prior to mine closure, Imkor produced a mineral reserve estimate of more than 70 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 0.136%, containing 95 640 tonnes of tin. The Uis deposit remains one of the top five tin deposits in the world in terms of size, with substantial exploration potential within the existing mining license area.
In 2016 the AIM-listed, South Africa-based mining company Bushveld Minerals Ltd (“Bushveld”) acquired a majority stake in the then Uis Tin Project that held the Uis Mining Licence.
The tin assets of Bushveld were subsequently spun off into AfriTin Mining Ltd (“AfriTin”, or the “Company”), which listed as a separate entity on AIM in November 2017 and now holds an effective 100% interest of the Uis Mining Licence as Andrada Mining Limited.
