Jubilee Platinum slashes losses as optimisation cuts costs

Jubilee Platinum trimmed its loses by a third in the first half of its financial year and made optimistic noises about becoming a "significant player in the platinum arena".The company, which is listed on London's AIM and South Africa' AltX, cut losses before tax 34% to £1.02m in the six months to 31 December on revenue up 22% to £2.8m and gross profit up 34% to £1.3m.Costs of sales increased by only 11% to £1.44m thanks to an improvement in the performance of Jubilee's Middleburg smelter where an optimisation strategy has helped achieve a 16% reduction in unit power costs per tonne of metal output.This enabled increased sale of power to the national power grid of South Africa and have allowed the company to begin negotiations with the power utility about a possible increase in power sales from its Middleburg plant as well as a possible extension of its current short term power purchase agreement to a minimum period of three years.These negotiations are expected to be concluded in the second quarter.Jubilee generated a cash outflow of £0.25m in the period and had £0.42m cash in the bank at the period end, before raising £750,000 in February from a placing of new shares to fund the design and engineering for two chrome and a platinum group metals (PGMs) surface processing operations.Chief executive Leon Coetzer said Jubilee was "firmly focused" on the execution of the surface platinum processing projects "as we accelerate the company into a position where we are a significant producer of our own platinum group metals"."The recently reported acquisitions and agreements are transformational and will make Jubilee a significant player in the platinum arena."He hopes to bring the new projects into commercial production during 2016.