Jubilee Metals has finished the upgrade of water infrastructure at its Roan Project in Zambia — which hampered the production levels of the metals processing company — but believes it will not be unleashed.
“The installation of the new dedicated water infrastructure and upgraded power and feed supply infrastructure have been completed successfully with the restart of operations back to nameplate capacity,” the company, valued at R6.32bn on the JSE, said on Monday.
This will come as good news for the company — which operates in SA, Australia, Mauritius, Zambia and the UK — as its annual profits slumped in its 2022 year to end-June after its capitalisation and expansion programme.
The total amount of platinum group metals (PGMs) sold decreased by close to one-fifth to 41,586oz, while copper almost doubled to 2,604oz, during the financial year.
Jubilee is listed on the alternative exchanges to the JSE and in London. It has steadily grown its PGMs business in SA over recent years and made two acquisitions in 2019, adding the Inyoni chrome and PGM business, as well as the Sable refinery in Kabwe, Zambia to advance its metal diversification and spread its geographic risk.
Meanwhile, work continues on improving the production of cobalt and copper from waste at its Sable Refinery, also in Zambia. This includes “the development and ramp-up to commercial level of new extractive methods for the recovery of copper and cobalt from historical waste”.
The trials of these new methods have been “extremely effective”, the company said, adding that it lowered operating costs and allowed the production of copper from mixed materials, such as copper sulphide and copper oxide ores.
CEO Leon Coetzer called it a “game changer”, because it allowed for “multiple ores to be produced at once, similar to what we have achieved at our Inyoni PGM plant in SA”.
In terms of cobalt from the Sable operations, Jubilee is targeting initial production of 50 tonnes of contained cobalt metal, equal to about 220 tonnes of the final product, before ramping it up to 1,200 tonnes of contained cobalt metal annual capacity, or 5,280 tonnes of final product.
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