Consolidated Tin Mines Limited was established on 31^st July 2007 as a tin focused company.  Tin prospects and  projects accumulated by Ralph De Lacey and John Sainsbury were transferred into this new company with the intent of assessing the known tin deposits on the lower Herberton tin field to determine if a viable tin mining operation could be established. It was never intended to be an exploration company, the aim was always to establish if the known deposits could be bought into viable production with the recent increased tin price. De Lacey/Sainsbury had also accumulated a vast amount of historic tin exploration data resulting from decades of extensive research and exploration by a variety of companies. Much of this data, being the only copies of company ‘in house’ reports and records.

The Herberton Tin Field has been mined since 1880 with literally thousands of mines established throughout this vast mineralised area, many of these mines were small scale, others were operated at company scale and worked for many years. Almost all started on outcropping high grade ore; some were mined to considerable depth on high grade tin ore.  Because of the hive of historic mining activity on this tin field, it was obvious that exploration focused on easy winnable high grade ore would be futile, the question being ‘how much easy winnable low grade ore is still available’.

The company identified the real potential for a large scale low grade mining operation would  have be in the Greisen type deposits and/or in the Skarn type deposits. Both of these deposit types had been identified and  explored to a certain extent by other companies and  had been either abandoned or mothballed due to the tin price collapse in the late 1980’s. No single deposit was known that would provide sufficient ore to allow the necessary economy of scale that would be needed to mine and treat low grade ore.  The only real possibility was by putting together a number of these known deposits to make up sufficient ore to supply to a centrally located treatment plant.

The Company began investigating the skarn deposits, and identified three of these as having the potential to carry 8 to 10 million tonne which would be necessary to provide an initial mine life of 8 to 10 years for a mill with 1 million tonne per year throughput. Minimum cut off grade would be dependent on processing cost and tin price. The Company decided tin production scale should be at a level that would see the company considered a ‘significant producer’ that would attract tin buyer/smelter interest and competition and bring better tin price returns.

To achieve this, the company decided the scale of production aim should be in the vicinity of 5,000 tonne tin metal (in concentrate) per annum.  This would require treatment of 1Mtpa with a recovered grade of .5%Sn  

Consolidated Tin Mines Limited was listed on the ASX on 26^th February 2008, having raised just over $4M by the issue of just over 20 million shares at $0.20c.

The company began exploration work on the three selected skarn deposits named (by previous explorers) Gillian (pronounced Jillian), Pinnacles which was explored by Comalco and consists of a number of separately named projects over about three kilometres of strike length, and Windermere.

The Windermere Mineral Development Licence (MDL), as was also the case with Gillian, had been a series of abutting Mining Leases that were converted to a Mineral Development  Licence, as a holding tenure. Both Gillian and Windermere had been held (by various owners) under continuous mining tenure for decades.   Consolidated Tin Mines negotiated a purchase agreement with the then owner, but just prior to finalising the deal, the previous owner accidently allowed the MDL to expire. There was a scramble to reinstate the MDL. The Queensland Mines department would not allow the MDL to be reinstated, instead insisting on a new MDL application being lodged. This meant the company could not commence any work on Windermere until this new MDL application was granted ( a long drawn out process in Queensland that can take years). The company held a granted Exploration Permit for Minerals (EPM) over the very southern end of the Windermere deposit and outside the Windermere MDL called Dead Mans Gully. Exploration was confined to Deadmans Gully until the Windermere MDL was granted.

Previous exploration of the Mt Garnet tin bearing skarn deposits had shown the cassiderite was fine and there were also one or two different acid soluble tins. Within the Gillian deposit there was also claimed to be a new tin bearing mineral, given the name ‘Gillianite’. The company recognised from day one that it would have to develop a method of extracting all of the different tin types. The three skarn deposits had minor metallurgy differences, but the differences would be minor in the broad sense. The mineral extraction circuit designed for one would work across all three (and others) with minor variations.

Gillian ore was selected to begin this challenge.

The real challenge was not just to establish sufficient ore reserves, but also to develope a viable mineral extraction circuit.  

“the question being ‘how much easy winnable low grade ore is still available”’

CSD Managing Director Ralph De Lacey 2007