Stellar Resources : The Examiner – TinOne, Stellar and Flynn are among companies exploring NE Tasmania

TinOne, Stellar and Flynn are among companies exploring NE Tasmania

By Benjamin Seeder

Mining exploration leases are clustered thick across the North-East, and there are more set for approval. Source: Mineral Resources Tasmania

Liz Monger (left) and Stewart Smith of TinOne Resources. Photo supplied

Herrick resident Gilbert Salter spent half his life in the mines of North-Eastern Tasmania.

Working six days a week in the Dorset Tin Dredge for 25 years, Mr Salter says he was paid $83 per week by the time the operation closed in 1971.

Still in the NE region's mining glory days, he bought a mine lease along the Wyniford River, near Pioneer, and began to work it himself.

"I was working on the dredge for so long I thought I'd like to have a tin mine, so I took the lease up there and worked that for about ten years," he says.

But like most of the local mines by the 1980s, Mr Salter closed his business when tin prices dropped sharply.

One of the region's biggest tin mines, the Aberfoyle mine, near Rossarden, closed for the last time in 1982, and mining in the North East seemed to come to an end.

Mr Salter says some of the towns in the region were hit hard after that, with residents moving on, and some taking up work in the forestry industry.

Rossarden, with its Aberfoyle mine, was one - its population fell from over 500 residents at its peak to about 48, as of 2021.

But forty years on from the closure of those mines, and North-East Tasmania is in the midst of a revival in new mining exploration.

Driven by the new demand for the materials needed to make everything from wind turbines and electric vehicles to the super magnets used in sophisticated defence applications, exploration companies have collectively raised tens of millions of dollars in the past two years to fund drilling campaigns Tasmania's North-East.

A map of exploration licences granted by Mineral Resources Tasmania shows large chunks of the region staked out.

The explorers range from ABx Group, which is seeking rare earth minerals used in some of the most sophisticated technologies, to Flynn Gold, which is hoping to confirm its discovery of a rich gold system just to the west of St Helens.

Others like Canadian group TinOne, and Australian company Stellar Resources, are exploring for lithium - the mineral needed to power the millions of electric vehicles that will soon cruise roads around the world.

Vast footprint

Gary Fietz, executive director of Stellar Resources, began exploring in Tasmania because it was becoming difficult to find promising ground on the mainland.

"Victoria was getting awfully crowded … all the major Canadian and Australian explorers were fighting to get positions there," he said.

"But there just wasn't any good ground to be had, so we thought, 'well it's the same system in NE Tasmania - let's give it a crack'. And we got our first licence here in 2019."

The company now has 12 exploration licences over some 2200 square kilometres in NE Tasmania.

Mr Fietz said he is looking for lithium, as well as gold and base metals like tin, and he's particularly excited about a project around North Scamander.

"There has been quite a bit of drilling done there in the past but nothing since 1981 … there's a possibility of a much bigger system present there," he says.

The company is expecting to begin its drilling program there later this year.

According to ABS figures, minerals exploration spending in Tasmania in the year to September 2022 was $36 million - about triple the rate of 2020.

The need for new minerals like lithium and rare earth elements are driving the rate of exploration as investors continue to pour money into critical metals.

These companies are also benefiting from the state government's Exploration Drilling Grant Initiative (EDGI) which aims to incentivise exploration by providing grants of up to $70,000 to companies tapping holes.

Golden prospects

One of the most active explorers is Flynn Gold, an ASX-listed group that hopes to discover a significant deposit just to the west of St Helens.

Chief executive officer Neil Marston says his company chose to focus on Tasmania because of the comparative dearth of exploration there in recent decades.

With good ground scarce in Victoria, and the gold price at around US$2000 per ounce, explorers have turned their eye to Tasmania, he said.

The geology in North-East Tasmania is an extension of Victoria's Western Lachlan fold belt, with similar geology to the Victorian goldfields that formed the centre of the gold rush of the 1850s.

"The prize for exploring in Tasmania is suddenly becoming a lot, there's a lot more potential there than people think," Mr Marston said.

Flynn has focussed most of its efforts on its project near St Helens, Golden Ridge.

"Some of the results we've received to date indicate that there is lots of undiscovered potential there," Mr Marston said.

Those results included a 12.3-metre core section containing 16.8 grams of gold per tonne, extracted at a relatively shallow depth of 108.7 metres.

The company's drilling campaigns last year yielded similarly positive results up and down an eight kilometre front at Golden Ridge.

The company raised $3.7 million from investors recently to fund further drilling in Tasmania later this year.

A safe investment

Canadian company TinOne chose Tasmania because of its strong history of tin mining and its comparative security as a jurisdiction compared China, Myanmar, and Bolivia - the places that produce most tin.

"We started looking for opportunities in the tin space that were not very well explored," said Stuart Smith, technical director at TinOne.

"Alot of the tin supply in the world currently comes from countries that are not so favorable from an investor perspective in terms of country risk," he said.

The company has an exploration licence over ground around Rossarden, along with several other tenements in the region.

It is starting with surface sampling at its Rossarden claim, and is in the process of raising funds to continue its drilling campaign around its Great Pyramid project, to the west of St Helens, where there has been little exploration in modern times.

Results from its drilling at Great Pyramid so far included a 23-metre core sample that graded at 1.09% tin.

"There are other significant tin occurrences in the north east … that we felt were just vastly under-explored, they hadn't had significant workings for 30 years or more, so that was a big opportunity that we saw," Mr Smith said.

Tin, once used to produce the cans that your baked beans came packed in, is projected to see surging demand as the world becomes more electronics-intensive.

Some have called the metal the "glue" of the modern world - about 50 per cent of its usage is as a solder for electronics.

That market is expected to expand as more of the world comes to rely on computers and phones and as more everyday items like TVs and refrigerators begin to incorporate advanced circuitry.