Tin Mining News

Having built its fortunes extracting and producing metal for export around the world, Cornwall is a town known for tin mining. But in recent years, the industry has all but disappeared with only shore based mining taking place in one or two sites. The impact on the economy is tangible and has even decimated previously prosperous towns. According to Coastline Surveys, a new and exciting project has been launched that will build on the town’s mining heritage with an ambitious proposal to recover tin deposits from the waters off the North Coast of Cornwall. Marine Minerals Ltd.

According to some reports, the world’s first mining operation in the world to use vessels for dredging ore from the sea bottom was developed in 1907 by Australian Edward Miles. He dredged the sea bottom around Thailand’s modern tourist island of Phuket to recover tin, which had been mined on the island for hundreds of years. By the 1960s some innovative entrepreneurs had begun to build iron rafts using drills to loosen the sea bottom allowing them to vacuum the residue to the surface in order to separate the tin.