Speaking with Tom Larsen, CEO of Eloro Resources, (ELO.T) is always a pleasure. Larsen is delighted with the tin holes ELO reported in press releases on January 23 and February 20, 2025, with more to come. These releases reported high grade tin mineralization in Eloro’s tin domain at its Iska Iska project in Bolivia.
The tin grades were good but Larsen is really excited about the way the tin is emplaced. “Previously the tin we encountered was lower grade sulfide material. We had around 50% recovery on that material,” said Larsen. “The tin we encountered in this breccia (TIB (Tertiary Intrusive Breccia) on Figure) is visible coarse-grained high temperature cassiterite. Very similar to the tin found at other mines in Bolivia’s tin belt. You get much better recoveries, 80% or better. And you can use gravity separation for recovery which is much less expensive.”
The holes were drilled as part of a program focussed entirely on the tin domain. The area had seen limited wide space reconnaissance drilling, which had indicated a tin deposit. From the February 20 release, “The intrusive breccia is very likely an offshoot or apophysis from a large tin porphyry at depth. The likely top of this tin porphyry is marked by a highly conductive zone that is interpreted as a pyrite-pyrrhotite halo around this porphyry.” From that same release, “5,799.4m of diamond drilling have been completed in eleven (11) holes. PQ core size has been used in the majority of holes in this program to obtain larger, more representative core samples.”
“Tin is not well understood in the North American junior resource community,” said Larsen. “Gold, silver and copper are where we tend to focus because there is not a lot of tin history. In Europe it is very different. European investors have been following tin closely for years.”
“There are only about 300,000 tons of tin mined per year. 60% of that comes from Myanmar – what used to be called Burma – Myanmar, Indonesia and down stream operations from China . And a major Tin mining operation is watching closely the rising movements in the DRC of armed rebels (insurgents) that could imminently disrupt mining operations in the DRC because of real violence in the area,” said Larsen. “Supply is very constrained but demand is growing. We’re seeing a bit of a squeeze with tin prices running $15 a pound.”
“We have a truly unique deposit and the tin domain extends the pit,” said Larsen. “The tin domain is uplifted and can therefore be included in the PEA. The objective is to potentially outline 30 to 40 million tonnes of average .5 % tin per tonne first pass that could then be added to the initial PEA.. That’s about 11 pounds of tin per ton which would value the rock about USD 150-160 a ton. 80% recovery with a $15-20 per ton operating cost. That’s a big margin.”
The tin domain is not something new in Bolivia.
Larsen does not want to wait. “We can ramp in and build a pilot plant for a CAPEX of about 20 million. Money which would come from Bolivian investors,” said Larsen. Larsen talked about the ramp/pilot plant concept in the context of the silver zinc domain but it may make even more sense in the cassiterite tin domain where the pilot plant would be a well understood gravity separation circuit.
“We have good grades in the first two holes we have reported,” said Larsen. “ High grade. Including 1.5 metre veining up to 6 percent being reported along these wide intercepts of between .5 percent and 1.35 percent Tin in cassiterite in the tin breccia. We have more holes to report in the program but they are in the same sort of rock.”
Critically, the breccia is big. In the February 20 release Larsen commented, “Hole DSB-74 located 100 meters southeast of high-grade tin hole DSB-72 demonstrates continuity of this evolving coarse grained cassiterite-rich tin zone within the large intrusion breccia system which is approximately 750m long by 450m wide and extends to a depth of at least 700m.”
Iska Iska has always been a huge silver/zinc deposit, rated as the third largest undeveloped silver deposit in the world. However, now that the tin is being defined and, more importantly found to be hosted in high recovery cassiterite, larger companies are showing an interest. “We are receiving more interest from potential strategics since the release of latest drill results in the newly discovered Tin domain and are in the NDA process stage with a couple of well recognized names,” said Larsen.
The fact is that Eloro can and will carry on along its path of definition drilling, expanding its resource, working towards a PEA which includes the tin domain and, likely ramping into the deposits and building a pilot plant. Realistically, however, Iska Iska and probably Eloro itself, will be sold to a major. It is a generational discovery and one which will take at least a generation to fully develop.
Larsen and his team have been very careful to keep the issued share count as low as possible while still advancing the project. Even with an expected raise, the overall share count will be no more than 100 million. A nice, round, number which divides easily into 1 or 3 billion. Very easily.