Alphamin Resources

BUILDING THE FUTURE

Mining Feature

Alphamin Resources

BUILDING THE FUTURE 2

Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine

Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101

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PROJECT DIRECTED BY

WRITTEN BY

Malvern Kandemwa

Jay Benmehidi

Mining Feature Already in short supply, demand for tin is about to surge in a manner that will launch the price of tin into the stratosphere. Tin miners will become the beneficiaries of a latter-day gold rush that will sweep the world.

Against this backdrop, the decision by Alphamin Resources to acquire three exploration licenses in the dense jungle of North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, covering a total of 1,270km2, now appears a shrewd one.

The TSX/Alt-listed miner is regarded to be one of the most exciting names in global mining for good reason. In similar fashion to many companies that have gone on to great things, Alphamin began life as something of an audacious gamble when, in 2011, its owners acquired the Bisie tin project, a hugely promising yet isolated orebody located in the deepest depths of the DRC’s untamed mountainous eastlands of North Kivu province.

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O

ur knack of overlooking the unassuming and yet hugely important things in life is undoubtedly one of humanity’s design flaws. As a point in case, let’s look at our relationship with tin for a moment - a metal around which civilisation has been built, not to mention the global economy of today.

Without tin, the key material used to smelt Bronze, there would have been no Bronze Age and, later in Enlightenment era Europe, no tinplate – no tinned foods or drinks and therefore no means of preserving them, in other words.

Today, tin is the top technology metal. Owing to its broad range of uses in manufacturing, con-

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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine

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struction, and transportation, not to mention its use as the key material in solder - an alloy used to bond components and electronic circuitry in everything from children’s toys to commercial aircraft – the silvery yellow metal is arguably even more important today than ever before.

Tin built the past and it built the present, and it will also build the future. In the forthcoming Fourth Industrial Revolution, which has already begun, tin will be needed to build electric vehicles, which will make up more than half of all vehicles on the road by the middle of the century, as well as the clean energy tech needed to consign fossil fuel energy sources the dustbin.

Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101

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Mining Feature

Alphamin Resources

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Make no mistake about it, at the time of Alphamin’s acquisition of the site in 2011, the Bisie tin project, in spite of its impressive, proven reserves of resource, was a risky move on the part of Alphamin. Fortunately, however, it was a risk that paid off. Tin prices are at an all-time high as of July 2021 and, driven by the greening and electrification of economies globally, prices are only heading one way in the medium-term: up.

ore mined, making the project an astonishingly low-cost venture that more than compensates for the difficulty in developing and building the mine in the first place: And difficult it was. Located deep as it is in an undeveloped area of North Kivu, construction of Mpama North was a complex and arduous undertaking. Building a mine is no small task in itself, but the logistics of first building a 30km access road to connect the Bisie project, which was previously only accessible by helicopter or a one-day jungle walk, to the outside world was a major challenge. But difficult as the project build was, construction of Mpama North and its associated infrastructure was completed between 2017 and 2019, on time and on budget.

The success of the project is testament to the hard work and enterprise of the men and women who made the insurmountable achievable, the results of which can be seen at Bisie today.

The underground mine is both safe and efficient, the site is now easily accessible, and Alphamin’s state-of-the-art processing plant consistently achieves output of up to 10,000 tonnes of contained tin per annum, amounting to roughly 3% of the world’s mined tin supply. Over the course of its 12-year lifespan, Bisie is projected to produce 152,300 tons of high-grade tin and will operate in the lowest cost quartile of all tin producers:

Demand for tin continues to rise whilst stockpiles and supply remain low, and a perfect bullish storm is forming on the horizon as a result.

“The processing plant was carefully designed to be as simple as possible. This was achieved using primarily gravity separation, with a small float at the end to eliminate impurities in the final concentrate. This simplicity allows us to keep our costs and power consumption modest, while obtaining good recoveries of around 72%.

At present our all-in sustaining costs are between US$10,000 and US$12,000 per tonne, within the lowest quartile of the global cost curve.

These are planned to be lowered further as the tin concentrate production process is further refined and more volume is added.”

Fast-forwarding to today, Bisie is home to Alphamin’s Mpama North mine, a truly world-class operation which has drawn great interest from the mining world due to the uncommonly high tin grade of its resource. Whereas the average global head feed grade of tin mines is rarely higher than 1%, Mpama North has a grading in excess of 4% - equal to 40kg of tin per ton of

Clearly these are heady times for Alphamin and operations are going from strength to strength, however Mpama North is just the beginning of its’ leadership team’s plan – it is a ‘starter project’ that very much represents the beginning, not the end of Alphamin’s plans.

Maritz Smith, CEO, Alphamin Resources

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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine

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Alphamin Resources “We find ourselves in a very strong position,” Maritz Smith, CEO of Alphamin, announced. “We are clearly in the right commodity. We don’t see any Greenfields tin mines coming on stream in the next seven to 10 years and the world’s third largest tin producer Myanmar in Asia is suffering after a recent coup overthrew the government. Over and above this, the mines in this region have depleted their low-hanging open pit fruit reserves and must explore their lower grade underground potential to sustain their businesses in the longer run.”

Demand for tin continues to rise whilst stockpiles and supply remain low, and a perfect bullish storm is forming on the horizon as a result.

What this means for tin prices, which have already surged by more than 50% since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, is obvious, and Alphamin is perfectly placed to enjoy the financial benefits of expanding its mining footprint to satisfy the world’s increasingly voracious appetite for the metal.

In-line with this goal, the next stage in Alphamin’s strategy going forward is to develop the Mpama South deposit, which can be found 750m adjacent to the Mpama North mine: “Our work thus far indicates that this deposit is similar to Mpama North. It dips in the same direction and is showing similar structural images and visual minerology.” Additionally, Alphamin is looking to confirm the presence of an entirely new ore body that geologists believe are to be found further along the Mpama Ridge, and so far two potential areas have already been revealed, Marouge and the ‘V’, located roughly 10km from Mpama North.

It is an unlikely and yet undeniable truth that the fourth industrial revolution and the DRC are inextricably linked. The world desperately needs the DRC’s tin and vast amounts of it to realise its ambitious green economy ambitions, whilst the mineral-rich DRC urgently needs the world’s custom to develop its economy and realise its huge potential, so as to give its people the better future they deserve.

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Issue 101 · Business Enquirer Magazine

Mining Feature

Even so early in life, Alphamin Resources will be an important piece of the jigsaw going forward, and as the company continues to expand in size and scale, it will have a role to play in the great change that is to come.

Clearly these are heady times for Alphamin and operations are going from strength to strength, however Mpama North is just the beginning of its’ leadership team’s plan – it is a ‘starter project’ that very much represents the beginning, not the end of Alphamin’s plans.

Epiroc Machinery deployed on Alphamin’s site

Business Enquirer Magazine · Issue 101

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Alphamin Resources +(230) 269 4166 / +(243) 810 003 943 info@perrieriitsolutions.com www.alphaminresources.com

info@busenq.com www.busenq.com