LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Namibia-focussed tin mining company AfriTin Mining updated the market on its flagship Uis mine on Wednesday, reporting that modifications to address bottlenecks in the fines dewatering circuit of the processing plant were now complete.
The AIM-traded firm said that, as a result of higher-than-expected fines material in the run-of-mine feed, improvements were required to rebalance material flows and expand capacity related to the dewatering of grits and slimes.

It said it expected that the improvements would translate into increased concentrator plant throughput from September onwards.

Due to the implementation of those improvements, an extended maintenance shutdown of four days was required during August.

Despite that, monthly production of tin concentrate from the first phase mining and processing facility increased to 37.5 tonnes of tin concentrate for the month, extending production gains made during June and July.

The company said that for the first stage of phase 1, it was targeting the processing of 45,000 tonnes of ore per month at a rate of 80 tonnes per hour, for the production of 60 tonnes of tin concentrate per month.

With the main bottlenecks addressed, the firm said it would focus on improving the availability and utilisation of the plant to support the rest of the production ramp-up.

That would include additional instrumentation and controls, the optimisation of piping and valving configurations, refining the density control in the dense medium separation circuits, and installing an on-site laboratory.

Regular shipment of tin concentrate was continuing from Walvis Bay, despite ongoing Covid-19 restrictions in Namibia and South Africa.

Tin concentrate production for the year-to-date totalled 150 tonnes, the board said.

"We are pleased to have completed the bottleneck modifications to the dewatering circuit on our plant and to have extended the production increases of the past three months," said chief executive officer Anthony Viljoen.

"We will now look to leverage these circuit improvements to reach our stage one production target of 60 tonnes of concentrate per month in the fourth quarter."

At 1141 BST, shares in AfriTin Mining were down 0.23% at 2.2p.

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