The Tin-Mining Industry: A Growth Point for Cornwall

Abstract

FOR THE first time in forty-five years, there are now grounds for believing that the long neglected remaining tin ores of the old mining region of south-west England can still provide a growth point in the future development of the area. New problems are arising in the world position' of production and consumption of tin, and new techniques of mining are leading to a reassessment of former mining fields, while in Britain there is growing a new and more positive approach to the problems of regional economic development. In the post-war years, the world tin-mining industry has suffered from large fluctuations in the price and production of tin, but the crisis of 1958 had the most serious and far-reaching effects on the industry. At that time, the industry was suffering from a surplus production capacity of 20,000 tons per annum owing to the rapid tailing off in the substantial purchases made by the United States for its strategic stockpile, and to a simultaneous drop in the world commercial demand.2 The position deteriorated further when an additional 20,000 tons of tin flooded on to the market from Russia, which was exporting tin for the first time since I950. The industry after a decade of expanding output was suddenly forced to contract.3 The world tin-mining industry was thus in an acute position and the two subsequent years of restricted output seriously damaged the productive capacity of the industry. Exploration schemes and the re-equipment necessary for the maintenance of output were curtailed, and many mines abandoned at this time remained closed, even when prices recovered, owing to the high costs of re-opening.4 Political disturbances in both Indonesia and the Congo later adversely affected the supply situation, and the final result was that by 1961 consumption began to exceed production by Io,ooo tons per annum; this deficit was closed largely by metal releases from stocks. Production has remained at a low level, while consumption has continued to increase so that in I962 the gap widened to I4,000 tons and to 2I,oo0 tons in I964.5 Inevitably the price of tin has risen: from ~888 per ton in 1961 to 6I238 in I964 and to over IIsoo per ton in September I965. The International Tin Mining Council had been established in 1956 with a buffer stock of tin or finance to cope with any large fluctuations in the price and supply of tin.6 Price levels would be supported in times of weak demand by tin purchases by the buffer stock and restrained when supplies were scarce by selling the accumulated stocks of metal. In the event the buffer stock was unable to contain the recent price increase as the total stock of metal was exhausted in November I963. Thus, six years after one of the most severe crises to shake the tin-mining industry in recent times, price trends indicate that the problem now facing tin producers is one of consumption exceeding production. Meanwhile, the deficit is being filled by releases from the United States' strategic stockpile, which at the current rate of disposal will not last more than five years.7