focusIR May 2024 Investor Webinar: Blue Whale, Kavango, Taseko Mines & CQS Natural Resources. Catch up with the webinar here.
Sothern strategy is now at nameplate production, Ella. It's in the RNS that power supply issues have been dealt with. This does not, of course, apply to SA where there is no recent news about the effects of power shedding as far as I know.
Thanks for posting the copper price figures, Homey. I have just plotted them against avergage Sp for the corresponding months. The Sp plot looks remarkably like the copper price plot, but shifted to the right by about one month. I'm sure Seis would make a much better job of it, but the correlation is striking.
Northman. I think we are now out of Cyprus. https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/CMRS/cyprus-joint-venture-termination-huz4edhv4begnx0.html
Northern. Very good point. Hope you're right. I'll light a fire and pour myself a Tequila sunset [sic] to celebrate todays rise!
You may be right, NShark. Alternatively, investors could just be looking at the price of copper which is recovering fast from its 2022 decline. Since, say, mid October the price of copper has gone up $1500 per tonne. With our fixed costs, this goes straight to the bottom line. Taking a conservative nameplate capacity at Sable of 12,000 tonnes, that equates (if price maintained) to an increment in earnings of $18 M per annum. As Seis has nicely shown, as a metal producer with good (not wafer thin) margins, the main driver for our Sp will be commodity prices.
Quite right, Bushy. Time will tell.
It might be helpful to check in on this WHI note, page 20, which outlines our cobalt extraction process (no gas):- https://jubileemetalsgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FN-JLP-30032021.pdf.
PS Patina = aesthetic corrosion!
Right. So, as we are not smelting but using an EW process at Sable to produce our purified copper, there will be no cobalt gas. Just an oxide concentrate to sell on for someone else to refine. Producing that concentrate will involve downstream costs as outlined previously.
BTW. I always thought the patina on old copper was due to the reactions of surface copper oxides with water, carbon dioxide and sulphur in the atmosphere.
I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong, BT, but Leon is on record as saying we will producing a cobalt concentrate, whilst the method you are outlining involves refining to pure metal. Most articles I have read involve separation of cobalt from copper using flotation or magnetic means:-
"The most important sulfide sources, the copper-cobalt ores of Congo (Kinshasa) and Zambia, are processed in the conventional manner to produce a copper-cobalt concentrate. This is then treated by flotation to separate a cobalt-rich concentrate for treatment in the cobalt circuit. Separation flotation utilizes pneumatic and mechanical agitation to produce air bubbles that carry the mineral particles to the surface. Different reagents are used to attract the cobalt minerals to the bubbles in preference to copper. Cobalt concentrates, which can contain as much as 15 percent cobalt, are then processed further, using either pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical extractive processes.".
Metallic cobalt boils at a temperature of 2927 degrees Celsius. Wouldn't that sort of temperature in a leach solution produce an enormous explosion? Just asking.
This sort of process would seem to me to fit in more with the (admittedly cryptic) pictures posted by Jubilee on Twitter 11th November.
None of these leach processes are 'proprietary'. I think we all know that. They have been around for donkey's years. (I'm discounting Jetti's process which does have a patent pending, I believe). The problem is scaling them up to work at industrial level with a mixture of feeds, and to do so economically. This is what JLP engineers are good at - tinkering - flow sheets - adapting processes to the DNA of the tailings dumps.. It was the same story with fine chrome, getting perfectly available, off-the-shelf technology actually to work economically at scale. It doesn't matter if it is proprietary, as long as it works!
I suppose it's a question of perspective, Bushy. I had to sell the greater part of my holding a while ago to sort out a family crisis. Fortunately, the Sp was about 18p at the time and the money was put to good use (which, I suppose, is what it's for, rather than the sterile business of accumulation for its own sake). At the time, I was hugely grateful to Colin for building this company. Since then I have watched my remaining holding (average approx 3p) halve in value. I have given you credit for predicting this. I also accept that your recent comments (expressed in unneccessarily disrespectful language) may well contain an element of truth. Our company has always suffered from a frustrating opacity and there is always the danger of wearing rose tinted spectacles. It is helpful to have the negatives pointed out. However, comments like "wafer thin margins" are intemperate. If our margins are wafer thin, then those of most others in this space must have been cut with a microtome.
In the long long run, I guess it boils down to how you rate our net asset value in relation to the market cap along with prospects of recovery in commodity prices. Seis has shown quite convincingly that there is a good correlation here with Sp, and a fair wind should see recovery in our fortunes (IMHO)
In any event, I think we both can be confident that H1 2023 will bring an absorbing news flow, and I wish you, and everyone else here, a happy new year.
Thanks Mikie and to all the helpful, knowledgeable and courteous posters on this board. I agree with Seis that the wording of the last RNS is slightly tantalizing, hinting at furhter run of mine agreements and moving more purposefully into the cobalt space, with plans to increase smelting and processing capacity over and above those previously outlined for the northern strategy and the stated aim to capitalise on our sulphide leaching breakthrough.
I only hope our new chairman is flexing his muscles with these developments, though there is no indication so far. Ever the optimist, I am anticipating a good flow of news in Q1 2023.
As an afterthought, unless something dramatic happens in the next few days, I am claiming runner up position in our end of year Sp competition even though I was out by 100%. We all know who wins - good on him/her - you got it right. (this time!)
Happy Christmas all.
Initially slightly alarmed to see this on yesterdaty's Trading Updates on this site:
"Savannah Resources PLC - Europe-focused lithium development company - Completes its USD407 million acquisition of US oil major Exxon Mobil Corp's entire upstream and midstream asset portfolio in Chad and Cameroon."
Maybe someone should acquaint the author with Savannah Energy (SAVE)!
H43, my reading is that buying into an existing refinery more or less defines the capacity. In other words, the real question is whether we should be building our own refinery from scratch or not. An alternative, of course, is to buy into two existing refineries. Looks like we will find out in January.
Thanks BB2 for the helpful clarification. We’ve been told that the tailings at Ndola have very little cobalt so I presume the metal is being derived from local ROM material which we are buying ( the price being reflected in our processing costs). If so, it would be nice to know how robust this supply chain actually is.
In bed with ‘flu, so found myself reading XTR’s latest RNS. 1.1M tonnes of copper at just over 0.2% Cu at their Racecourse project. Admittedly this was poorly received by the market but CB is putting a positive spin on it and plans to move forward.
Why am I posting this? Well the resource is very similar to what we have in the northern strategy (300M tonnes at 0.3% Cu). The only difference is that ours has already been mined.
Nice update. A lot of comments here on Cobalt contribution, and rightly so. But the bit which caught my eye was the leaching of finely ground copper sulphides. I know this process has been around a while, but am unsure if anyone else has scaled it up to work efficiently in the industrial setting. In my view it is a game changer, hugely increasing the mix of material we will be able to process in the north (analagous to the flexibility we have achieved at Inyoni with PGM material).
Does anyone get the impression that Leon, in his final paragraph, is hinting that we might be going for a new build refinery in the north? Hugely expensive and time consuming, I know, but those who benefit from my estate might think this is a good idea!
There are a lot of missing posts on my feed. Not sure if others have the same problem.
A lot of big transactions around the 11.6p mark suggest to me an orderly transfer of shares. Not sure what to make of the late uncrossing trade at 12.2.
The intricacies of the market befuddle me, but my gut reaction is that we are, at last, on the move.