Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

TinOne Resources (TSX-V: TORC)(OTCQB: TORCF) CEO Chris Donaldson on Advancing A Portfolio of Robust Tin Projects in Australia

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest, joining me today is the CEO of TinOne Resources, Mr. Chris Donaldson. How are you, sir?

Chris Donaldson: I'm doing well. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Gerardo Del Real: It's great catching up in person. It's been a bit. We just chatted a few weeks ago about the spectacular results from TinOne, so I wanted to get you out here and just have a conversation about how you're feeling about that drill program.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah, well, it's come together pretty well. If you remember it's project that we have in Tasmania in Australia, had a historic resource on it of about 10,000 tonnes at about 0.2% with all the mineralization right at surface down about 40 meters. We've been drilling for last three months and are starting to get some real good results coming out, which is fantastic. The latest batch all hit over 0.2%.

In one case, we had about 20, 26 meters at half a percent tin, which is great, in a new area of the deposit that didn't have any other drilling on that. That was the first kind of objective that we hit, getting higher grade, and now we're drilling a little lower than the previous drilling and it looks like it's extending down. Definitely on track and have more results coming out in the next couple months.

Gerardo Del Real: Now you have multiple projects, but this is an advanced stage project, right? Tell me a bit more about the approach to this specific project.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah. We have several projects. We just actually made an acquisition a month ago of a project called Rattler Range in Tasmania as well. I think we now have about four or five of the seven tin occurrences in Tasmania, so we've got a good assembly of projects. The order of how we're working them, Great Pyramid is one we're working on right now, looking to expand that resource and lead to an updated resource.

Hopefully we'll have enough drilling out of this campaign to be able to restate the resource. We'll know that in the next couple of months. While that's going on, we're also doing some earlier stage work on a project called Aberfoyle. Aberfoyle, about half an hour, 45 minute drive from Great Pyramid. It's a district that had produced over two million tonnes of tin, got shuttered in the '80s when the tin price collapsed, but they were chasing high grade veins and never really did any modern exploration on it at all.

They're just kind of plan a year ahead and keep chasing these veins. We're doing a lot of mapping and rock chip sampling and so forth, both to see the extent of the historical veins, and also to see if there's some new ones. When we're finished drilling up at Great Pyramid, we'll slide on over to Aberfoyle and start drilling there.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned an updated resource estimate, and I know that you have a very specific target in mind, both tonnage and grade. I want to get to the why here in a second, but can you talk to that a bit?

Chris Donaldson: I mean we're a very early stage company right now. I think our market cap is about seven, eight million bucks. When you put it in that context, and for us, we're trying to get up to about 40 million. We think we can get there if we can get that resource into about a 30,000 tonne range at something about 0.2% or greater. Why I choose that number is that a company called First Tin bought a project called Taronga for about $40 million Australian about 18 months ago. At that time, that project was about 30,000 tonnes at 0.17, so that should underpin the value for the company. Then, of course, we have all the other projects as well, but I think that's our first hurdle is to try to get it into that range.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Why tin?

Chris Donaldson: Well, tin, it's kind of the forgotten battery metal, and it's one of the most cyclical of all of the metals that are out there. We saw earlier this year, about seven, eight months ago, it hit an all time high, about 50,000 a tonne. There's a real squeeze in the market unfortunately, it's come right down. I think we're sitting at about 22,000 a tonne right now. The long-term forecast similar to copper, is the demand is there.

The primary use is in soldering, so anything electric, it's considered the glue that holds batteries together and semiconductors and so forth. Demand side, the long-term prospects are definitely there. The supply side is more interesting. Most of it is coming out of jurisdictions that you would consider maybe dubious, so you're talking Myanmar and DRC, Indonesia, China. Part of what led to the squeeze about seven, eight months ago was that China and Indonesia were restricting the export of it. The real squeeze price went up, and it's a smaller market. You have these fluctuations.

For us right now, we're not so concerned about the real peaks, but they will happen. Hopefully we get a little tailwind on that as we're coming out with some good news and so forth. There's certainly a demand for tin projects, new tin projects, and certainly a demand for tin projects in good jurisdictions. There are very, very few in, what we'll call, Western World or number one tier countries. The Teslas of the world who are talking about supply chains and are concerned about where their materials are coming from are starting to look to these projects that are in better jurisdictions with higher environmental standards.

Gerardo Del Real: You talked a bit about the recent acquisition and you already have a portfolio of high quality projects. I think it's important for people to understand the capital group behind you that's helping facilitate a lot of this action.

Chris Donaldson: Yeah. We're part of the Inventa Capital Group, and that is founded and led by Mike Konnert and Craig Parry. Many people know Craig from... He was a founder of IsoEnergy and NexGen, He's current chairman of Skeena Resources and the chairman of Vizsla Silver, which is doing phenomenally well with their Panuco Project in Mexico. Mike Konnert is the CEO of that project as well.

We've got a basket of companies, and this group is able to help us finance and structure these projects. Their mantra is to provide the elements that the world needs. Tin is one of them in the new electrification kind of age that's going forward, so good to have a solid backing. We have a real team behind us and the infrastructure that you need for earlier stage companies to grow. Yeah, so we've been out for about one year now working on the tin story and looking forward to getting more results out and really growing this resource.

Gerardo Del Real: You have assays pending, you have a resource update that's pending. You have multiple projects, you have a great group backing. You have a group that's got a history of success. A lot to like for a company with a market cap of seven, eight million.

Chris Donaldson: We just did a raise, so we got a couple million bucks in the bank. We're good for the next year.

Gerardo Del Real: There you go, Chris. Always a pleasure.

Chris Donaldson: Hey, thanks so much, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.