Junior tin miners are a rare bunch, for understandable reasons, but there are a few standout opportunities

Where are we with tin?

In a sense, it’s the great unknown metal. Not exactly unwanted, but not exactly glamourous either. Not of real use as a hedge against inflation, but nevertheless still capable of real price action on its own.

More to the point, perhaps, for investors who like to play around at the more junior end of the market, there’s not too much of it about.

Tin is around 25 times rarer than copper and seven times rarer than lead in the earth’s crust.

In absolute terms that still leaves some pretty sizeable occurrences and deposits to be tapped, but many of these lie in jurisdictions that can be less than welcoming to the world’s mining companies, including China and Burma.

Indonesia is also a big player in tin, and several South American countries have long established track records of tin production. But other less well-known mining jurisdictions, like Laos, Malaysia and Nigeria also feature prominently. The biggest pure-play tin producers are not names you’ve heard of, unless you are in pretty deep – they include Chinese companies like Yunnan Tin, Yunnan Chengfeng, Minsur and PT Timah.

Going tin mining can be hard work, especially if the economics make it unpalatable, as they did right at the end of the 20th century. Back then, when the bottom fell out of the tin market, all but the most diversified and robust of the miners were driven away, and it’s taken a long time for interest to revive at the bottom end of the market.

That is happening now though, stimulated by a new and avowedly robust outlook for tin as a key constituent of future technological development.

The first clarion call of this resurgence of tin was sounded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) back in 2018 when, in a presentation that was cited by Rio Tinto at the time, the argument was made that of all metals – including lithium, zinc and cobalt – the one most likely to benefit from technological advancement was tin.

The tin price then went up to US$50,000 per tonne or thereabouts, and MIT appeared vindicated.

That tin has subsequently fallen back quite substantially to its current levels of around US$25,000 is perhaps a good illustration of the need for serious caution in the sphere of commodities investing, but even so, the bull case that MIT laid out does remain in place.

For one thing, when tin rocketed up to those bonanza levels, it wasn’t the only metal to do so. It had been rising strongly during the Covid crisis, in common with many others, and then hit a peak during the market panic that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then, though, as supply chain disruption rapidly undermined the post-Covid exuberance that everyone had been expecting, and as China continued with its authoritarian stop-start economic policies, the price dropped away.

It's still some way higher than where it was when MIT made its prediction, having enjoyed a second run-up towards the end of last year, a run-up which was in turn followed by a subsequent correction.

During these times of yo-yoing prices, of course, miners with fixed cost bases have been watching margins widen and contract. But on the whole, for those who’ve been able to keep the pressures of inflation to a minimum, like Andrada or Alphamin, times have been good.

Shares in Alphamin, which is Toronto-listed and which claims 3% of global tin production from its operations in the Congo have more than doubled over the past two years.

And shares in Andrada, which until recently was known as AfriTin, have done almost as well – nearly doubling since 2021, as tin production from its Uis mine in Namibia has begun to get underway in earnest.

Other companies with less well advanced operations have also found favour with investors. Broker SP Angel has been recommending Cornish Metals to investors in recent market updates, as the company continues in its efforts to revitalise Britain’s once-proud tin mining industry.

Cornish Metals recently raised a sizeable sum to de-water the famous South Crofty mine, and has also been turning up attractive grades from the southern portion of the landholding there.

“Discovering a new high-grade zone of tin mineralisation in the middle of a historic mining district is a tremendous outcome, and again demonstrates the exploration potential of the region,” Cornish Metals chief Richard Williams said at the time. 

Certainly, the British government would be only too delighted if it could establish significant new production of what looks to be becoming an increasingly strategic metal. A privately-held company, Cornish Tin, is also making good progress in working up both old and new ground, while all around the hunt for lithium is creating the sense of an impending local Renaissance in mining.

Will it happen?

It remains to be seen, of course. But if the MIT analysis proves right in the longer term, and the tin price begins to move upwards once again, then the odds will be much more in favour.

Meanwhile, around the world, other junior mining companies continue to plug away in familiar and less familiar jurisdictions.

Tincorp Metals has just bought some assets in Bolivia.

AVZ Minerals Ltd (ASX:AVZ) is continuing to work up its Manono project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Auxico Resources continues to operate its Colombian tin trading business.

It’s not like gold or copper, where the juniors are ten-a-penny. But does that mean the upside is any the less?

Probably not. It just means that doing the right research and having the right people become more important than ever.