Host of juniors rusting on to soaring tin as it becomes the glue of electrification

The ASX tin sector is buzzing thanks to the metal’s advance into record (nominal) territory for a whole host of reasons.

The price has powered up from a CY2025 average of US$31,000/t to trade in the US$50,000/t-plus range to give tin roughly four times the value of the currently hot copper price.

Production being concentrated in places like China, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the DR Congo has given tin a geopolitical and ESG overlay just as solar panels, electric vehicles, data storage, robotics/artificial intelligence and so on add to tin’s historical usage.

Chronic under investment in new supplies and a propensity for supply shocks from the main producer nations to pop up on a regular basis adds to the case for tin to command the sort of attention copper gets in an electrifying world.

The catch phrase for tin now is that thanks to its dominant use as a solder, it is the glue that makes the electrification of everything happen, as well as being irreplaceable across a suite of modern technologies.

All that was flagged by Rio Tinto in a 2018 battery metals presentation which drew on an assessment by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) of which metals would most be impacted by electrification.

The materials experts from MIT found tin was the metal impacted most by global electrification, with lithium coming in second. Tin is too small a market for the likes of Rio Tinto so it went with lithium where it has been spending up big to become a producer of scale.

The work by MIT has proved to have been prescient, albeit with swings to both the upside and downside, for tin before arriving at the current situation where its price gives all appearances of at least consolidating in record territory.

It’s why the leading ASX tin stock Metals X (MLX) has put on 27% year-to-date for a market cap of $1.22 billion. It’s the only Aussie tin producer from its 50% share of the of the Renison mine in Tasmania (10,748t in 2025).

Further down the totem pole there is a bunch of ASX-listed juniors that have tin as their main focus.

 And having put in the hard yards when the tin price was not as supportive as it is now, there are a couple that are about to make their investment case in the form of preliminary feasibility studies (PFS) into project developments.

There are also a few that have acquired advanced projects/past producing tin mines, plugging themselves into the tin thematic. While tin was too small a market for Rio Tinto, it has become a beacon for a growing band of tin juniors.

SKY METALS (ASX:SKY):

Norm Seckold’s Sky Metals (ASX:SKY) is in the soon-to-release a PFS category following on from Monday’s news of a 58% increase in the tin resource estimate for its Tallebung project in NSW to 36,800t.

Best to wait for the PFS but it won’t surprise if it outlines an initial 10-year project producing  3000tpa and costing around $100m to get in to production in 2028. That scale of production  for a company with a $233m market cap (23.5c) is interesting in itself.

But Tallebung is more than tin. The shallow deposit also comes with tungsten (1.14M metric tonne units) and 9.94Moz o silver. The silver is a sideshow while the tungsten is something else.

Thanks to tit-for-tat tariff wars and control actions in the tungsten space by the US and China – it accounts for 80% of the market – the price for the mid-stream tungsten product APT has gone ballistic.

What used to bounce along in a $US200-$US350 per metric tonne unit price range now commands $US3,000 a metric tonne unit, more in Europe. The hardest of the hard metals has critical application across a wide range of industries, including the military.

Donald Trump seems intent on throwing away in the form of missiles what tungsten the US has and China is the only one who’s got any more for him at the moment. The price needs to be there to support supply none-Chinese supplies is the thematic. 

 Sky’s PFS on Tallebung should provide as interesting read on the expected revenue contribution from tungsten. What might have been a 15-20% contribution based on long-term historic prices could well be 100% if tungsten holds at current levels.

Tin for free? Base case prices to be used in the PFS will no doubt more be conservative than spot prices for tungsten, and tin. But when a company has worked up what is likely the fourth biggest tungsten resource on the ASX as Sky has at Tallebung, you’ve got to wonder.

STELLAR: (ASX:SRZ):

Stellar is another about to release a PFS after a big resource increase at its high-grade Heemskirk tin project in Tasmania to 115,300t, or 129,000t if its nearby St Dizier satellite deposit is added in.

The company has flagged the completion of the PFS in the current September quarter. An earlier 2024 base case study in to a 1,900tpa project costing $71m to developed is very much old hat now.

The company has said that the pending PFS will consider 3,000-3,500tpa, with a material improvement in economics and development optionality. Again, interesting stuff for a $120m market cap company (35c for its newly consolidated shares).

Metals X is Stellar’s neighbour down in Tassie and must have been keeping an eye on Stellar’s progress, a very close eye in fact as its recently took up a $17m share placement for a 16.4% stake in the company.

NORONEX (ASX:NRX):

The lightly capitalised junior ($7m at 1.1c a share) could rightly argue it is undervalued given its hunt for big-time copper with South32 in Africa’s Kalahari copper belt.

That program has got to the interesting stage in terms of drill prospect selection. It makes for interesting times for the company.

But it has added to its potential upside by adding an advanced tin-tungsten-silver project in Alaska to its story .

It’s called Sleitat and based on historic drilling by the likes of Cominco and others, it comes with a historical (non-JORC) resource estimate of 58,000 to 96,000t of contained tin.

It’s unusual for non-JORC resources to be reported on the ASX platform nowadays. But then again, the author of the resource estimate in this case was no less than the US Bureau of Mines.

Noronex has noted that the bureau reckoned that the deposit was one of only two tin deposits in the US likely to be economic, with the clincher being that assessment was based on a tin price materially below current spot prices.

The US hasn’t mined tin since 1993 and as mentioned earlier, tungsten has become of particular interest to the Pentagon.

ENERGY TRANSITION MINERALS (ETM):

Greenland hasn’t been playing ball with ASX-listed Energy Transition Miners (ASX:ETM) on its long-held ambition to develop its world-scale Kvanefjeld rare earths project near the town of Narsaq.

So much so that the government last month declined to extend the licence covering the project.

Fear not, Donald Trump might yet come to the rescue by taking over Greenland and green-lighting Kvanefjeld which also comes with a more than handy uranium component, if so desired.

Short of that, ETM can look forward to what could come from court actions it has taken against the Greenlandic government. After 16 years at the wheel at Kvanefjeld, it is assumed that any remedies in ETM’s favour will be substantial.

Now trading at a beaten-up 4.3c for a market cap of $94m, ETM has moved to put some pep back in to its share price by adding a tin-tantalum-niobium project the sunnier clime of Spain.

It can be said the Penouta project is advanced because up until October 2024, it was a hard-rock tin producer, with ETM’s $9.2m pick-up achieved through the insolvency process involving the previous owner.

ETM recently reported a mineral resource estimate in accordance with the JORC Code of 47,200t of tin, along with 8,600t of tantalum (niobium has not contributed to mine revenue to date).

CASPIN (ASX:CPN):

Caspin (ASX:CPN) is a relative newcomer to the tin space. But it is fast making a name for itself in the sector at its Bygoo project in NSW.

The initial tin resource at the project’s Kelpie deposit at the project already stands at a handy 19,300t. That’s interesting given Caspin’s modest of $32 million market cap at 11c a share.

The current resource estimate is due to be upgraded later this quarter. Expectations are starting to build around the broader Bygoo project becoming a  whole lot bigger.

Recently Caspin returned a 20m hit grading an impressive 2.11% tin from 107m at the newly discovered Errol’s Zone at the Kelpie deposit – the highest yet at the project under Caspin ownership.

FLYNN GOLD (ASX:FG1)

Talking about things Errol, Flynn Gold (ASX:FG1) has been poking in holes in Tassie since its IPO back in 2021 without the market much noticing.

That is reflected in its modest market cap of $13.3 million at 2.2c a share.

But the market did sit up and take notice this week when Flynn reported first assay results from a diamond drilling program at its Firetower project in northern Tassie.

The extensional drilling extended gold-tungsten-copper mineralisation at least 80m below previous drilling, returning 9.64m at 2.49g/t gold, 0.29% tungsten and 0.52% copper with silver and cobalt values from 200.1m.

The intersection included 1.47m grading 4.62g/t gold, 1.1% tungsten, 2.2% copper, again with silver and cobalt values.

A mineral resource estimate is likely in second half of the year.