Tallebung (100% SKY)
The Tallebung Project is Sky Metals’ flagship development asset, located approximately 70km north-west of Condobolin in central-western NSW.
Tallebung is a shallow, open-pit Tin-Tungsten-Silver Project with a completed Pre-Feasibility Study (PFS) demonstrating strong economics, low capital intensity, and a clear pathway toward production
Positioned in a Tier-1 Australian mining jurisdiction with existing infrastructure and outstanding metallurgical performance, Tallebung is uniquely placed to become a strategic supplier of critical minerals essential for electronics, semiconductors, renewable energy and defence applications.
The Tallebung Tin Project is the site of large-scale historical tin mining in central Western NSW with tin first discovered in the 1890s. The project hosts one of Australia’s largest undeveloped tin resources and benefits from exceptional ore sorting performance, enabling low-cost processing and significant environmental advantages.
Updated Mineral Resource Estimate – JORC-012
Tallebung hosts a large-scale multi-commodity Mineral Resource comprising tin, tungsten and silver.
| MRE Classification | Tonnes | SnEq (%) | Tin% | WO3 (%) | Silver g/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measured | 0.5 | 0.22 | 0.19 | 0.033 | 8.3 |
| Indicated | 12.3 | 0.17 | 0.14 | 0.029 | 8.5 |
| Inferred | 19.9 | 0.15 | 0.09 | 0.039 | 10.1 |
| Total | 32.7 | 0.16 | 0.15 | 0.035 | 9.5 |
Containing:
- 36.8kt Tin
- 1.14 million mtu WO3
- 9.94 million ounces Silver
Table 1: Tallebung MRE showing total tonnage, grade and contained metals at a 0.08% Tin cut-off grade. NB: WO3 refers to the Tungsten reported as an oxide as it is likely to be a significant by-product. Additionally, mtu refers to metric tonne units which Tungsten is conventionally reported as, 1 mtu = 10 kg WO3 (SKY ASX Announcement 23 January 2024).
The updated Resource significantly exceeds the previous Exploration Target and remains open in all directions, providing substantial potential for future resource growth and mine life extensions. Over 4,000 metres of drilling have been completed since the previous MRE update, with further drilling underway targeting additional resource growth and upgrades in confidence.
For further details on the update Mineral Resource Estimate, please see the ASX Announcement here
Ore Sorting
SKY aims to be an industry leader in environmental and sustainability practices. Tin at Tallebung is in a mineral called cassiterite and forms large “nuggets” which makes it exceptionally easy and economical to process as well as presenting many environmental benefits.
The extraordinarily coarse liberation size of the cassiterite due to the “nuggety” nature means that it does not require large amounts of energy to crush and grind. Additionally, the application of TOMRA Ore Sorting technology and gravity concentration methods both work remarkably well to save large amounts of power and water in the production of the tin.
Demonstration of Ore Sorting Process
The TOMRA Ore Sorting process at Tallebung requires no use of water or chemicals and reduces the total mass for further processing by 80%. Therefore, the technology significantly reduces the amount of water used for processing by 80% or 4/5th and further work is planned to determine the suitability of the rejected Ore Sorting mass for use as barren waste material. This material may then be useful for sheeting roads or to be sold for use in other regional construction projects.
In addition to the Ore Sorting benefits, the gravity processing method only uses water through the plant to concentrate the tin at Tallebung and recycles this water throughout the plant. This further reduces any future water requirements and avoids using large quantities of chemicals required by some other tin concentration operations. The simple gravity concentrate method and the TOMRA Ore Sorting reduce any waste and does not require the treatment and storage of large amounts of chemicals from mining and processing at Tallebung.
Mining History of the Tallebung Tin Field
The project is centred on the historic Tallebung Tin Field where numerous phases of mining activity have occurred over more than 100 years since its discovery in the 1890s. This activity targeted the high-grade quartz-lodes and the alluvial/colluvial material with a combined estimated historic production of 3,350 tonnes of tin concentrate. SKY is now targeting the bulk tonnage tin mineralisation underlying these areas of historic mining.
Due to the past mining activity at Tallebung, much of the costly infrastructure required for a mining operation is already in place. This includes powerlines to site, all-weather haul roads to site and within the site and an established past water supply enabling lower infrastructure set up costs for future mining operations.
Next Steps
Work will continue with the aim to further improve the promising prospects of potential low-cost tin production at Tallebung. This will include further drilling to explore for extensions to the shallow, higher-grade discoveries made in TBRC078 and TBRC090 (11@ 1.02% tin from 64m & 10m @ 0.69% tin from 23m respectively). In addition to these planned aggressive resource expansion drilling campaigns, work will also continue on metallurgical and mining economic studies in parallel over the coming months.
To rapidly advance the metallurgical and mining studies, a trenching program commenced last year has been sampled to obtain trench assays and continue to increase the geological understanding at Tallebung. The results will allow the Company to increase both the size and confidence in the MRE. Once assays for the channel samples are returned, 3-4 zones will be selected for bulk sampling.
To mimic mining, the bulk samples will be taken from below these trenches, in deeper cuts underneath and also perpendicular to the strike of the mineralisation to give representative bulk samples of the Tallebung tin mineralisation for metallurgical testwork.
Following sampling, the bulk samples will be crushed and sorted via XRT ore sorting in the full-scale ore sorter plant at the TOMRA Ore Sorting Test Facility in Sydney. The sorted samples will then be sent to ALS Burnie in Tasmania for grinding and processing in a pilot-scale gravity plant to produce a tin concentrate.
This program will provide a sample tin concentrate to use for marketing purposes and customer engagement. Given the favourable nature of the tin mineralisation at Tallebung, it is anticipated that the tin concentrate will be very desirable for downstream markets.
On the back of these works, mining economic studies will be prepared for late Q2 CY2025.
Concurrently with the technical studies above, environmental studies for development approvals are already being progressed. This demonstrates SKY’s strong conviction to the Tallebung Project and is in preparation to realise the potential of the project and bring it into production as quickly as possible.
Environmental Studies and Development Approvals
Environmental studies required to secure key development approvals continue to be expedited, with an initial background biodiversity study completed and a weather station installed as well as the groundwater monitoring bores already installed.
The installation of a weather station will provide vital data for the environmental studies needed for the development approvals process. This installation complements the work already completed on these studies, with the groundwater monitoring bores already installed and geochemical studies well advanced.
The installation of these data collectors and the biodiversity and geochemical studies are all in preparation to quickly advance the development approvals process required to commence mining of the Tallebung Tin Project.
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