Member Info for mammon

My sympathies to all who appear to have been cheated here. I nearly bought in myself but luckily stayed away. AIM investments and mining shares in particular seem like nests of vipers in my opinion.

I guess if you really wanted to annoy the protagonists here you should retain or buy a single share and insist that your rights as a shareholder (private or public) are fully complied with. That would throw a little spanner in their works.

On the other hand it is probably best to walk away, have a crystal clear view of what happened here and move on.

Two things:

1) I noticed that Leon mentions both 'investors' and 'shareholders'. It is 'investors' he seems to prioritise if you review the interview. Intersting distinction

2) The Mopani material is not tailings. It is smelter waste. The process of smelting changes the mineralogy and hence the waste recovery protocols. I believe Leon described Mopani waste as tailings; this is inaccurate. Moreover, unless the Jubilee team have cracked Mopani copper/cobalt smelter waste extraction the company is in for some 'interesting' times.

3) Waste rock is significantly more heterogeneous than tailings. Lets hope that the sampling regime on the waste rock has been extensive enough to take this into account. It needs to be.

Purchasing of however many millions of tons of waste rock is meaningless without this knowledge. The BOB should be asked if this has been done to their satisfaction. If not I am afraid this smacks of a desperate gambler putting it all on red in the hope of one last pay-off to clear their debts.

hi all,

i have posted here occasionally over the years.

today’s news is very disappointing. in my view this is a company that succeeded in improving processing engineering with pgms and chrome. then jubilee thought that they could do the same with copper. they thought and largely led investors to believe that they could successfully treat copper sulphide ore by leaching. this has definitively not proven to be the case. their supposed superior intellectual property or the ‘jubilee way’ has proven to be hubris bought on by moderate success with pgm processing. indeed, they have now employed the services of another company to help them with the processing. now jubilee appears to be running around like headless chickens doing deals, the details of which remain opaque for surface copper assets. deal making seems to have replaced the jubilee way to achieve that 10,000 tons of copper per annum which we were promised several years ago. now to cap it all they have rigged a placing which appears to allow a large investor to average down at the expense of others.

onto more technical matters.

1) originally the target was surface copper tailings. tailings by their nature are pre-ground and tend to be comparatively ****geneous within a particular dump. therefore, processing costs are reduced, and the outcome is at least partially predictable. all well and good and a technology that is established albeit subject to ongoing improvement. in case anyone should be interested here is a link to ancient greek tailings reprocessing which commenced in 1860. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5857/.

in my opinion the board (bod) should be open on how much the new technology partner will impact on costs. they should also be asked to be specific on the difference in monies received for in-house oxide produced copper and the copper sulphide material sent on for further processing elsewhere.

2) now jubilee has added, at significant expense, **** to its portfolio. here is a paper from 2022 on these particular ****s.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0375674222000450.

one sentence from the introduction will suffice:

despite the dramatic increase in co prices on the global market, the co recovery from the luanshya ****s appears to be non-economical due to the high costs of the necessary mechanical and chemical processing of the **** materials and the obtained extracts.

let’s hope the ‘jubilee way’ can crack this nut. the bod should be asked if they are confident that they can economically process this material. can they succeed where other have failed?

3) even more concerning to me is the strategy of targeting expensively purchased waste rock. by its nature, this material is significantly more heterogeneous than tailings. for example, barren material extracted to get at the original deposit is waste rock. the only way to economically extract material from waste rock would appear to me to engage in an intensive and extensive field

Thanks Ardbeggar,

I shall not engage in endless to and froing, but would limit myself to this:

Regarding the first point.....if the implication is that a large part of their copper were to be produced at much higher cost and Leon had not mentioned it that would be disengenuous in the least. I thnk you have to take the headline figures given and work off those, i.e. average cost of 5.5k per tonne at present and selling price at 8.5k per tonne. For me you have the figures, and how they are made up/broken down doesn't matter (to me anyway)

> Let's be clear the price of warehouse copper is currently around $8.500 per tonne. https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/copper-price. It is stating the obvious but that will not be the price Jubilee receives for copper sulphide concentrate ex-refinery. I do not know about you but I would appreciate some clarity on this point. I fail to see your problem here.

Second point....Leon talked a bit about ESG credentials and not utilising acid etc did he not? He was specifically touting ESG benefits over other companies. Are you saying all of those no longer remain?

> I do not mean to be patronising but I am afraid you understand little of the nuts and bolts here. Yes, acid is needed to extract copper in a leaching process. That is the alternative to smelting with all of the greenhouse gas implications which go some significant way to negate the ESG benefits of copper utilisation. So, yes, leaching is the best of a bad job, but note acid can be very effectively recycled in a modern leaching operation.

Third point, not as far as I know. What's the purpose of asking that, is the inference that Leon's telling fibs or misstating Jubilee's position?

> Well I do believe that we all try to ‘talk our book’ to some degree or another. I do not blame Leon for this. However, I think that RNSs should be the gold standard of company communications. If for whatever reasons they have proven incorrect then that should be clarified. That clarification is all that I request.

Thank you Ardbeggar. Just a couple of points:

1) The current copper price is indeed around $8,500 per tonne. Now that will not be the same price for sulphide concentrate that requires transportation and energy-intensive smelting. Am I stating the obvious here? Hence my request for some clarity.

2) The undoubted ESG benefits for breakthrough sulphide leaching have disappeared. This may be significant for some investors. It certainly reduces the 'ESG attractiveness' of the company and possible inclusion in increasingly important eponymous funds.

3) You would probably know better than me but if a statement in a RNS has unfortunately proved false/not come to fruition is any corrective statement/action necessary?

Hi all,

I don’t often post here, but I do have a little mineralogical background (see my historic posts) and would like to comment on the copper-related portion of Leon’s recent Midweek Roast interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEOuiXCPoGs

Specifically taking the portion at 14.40 – 14.55 minutes,

As relevant background material may I quote from the Jubilee RNS posted on 22nd November ’22?

Direct leaching of copper sulphide from mixed copper concentrates achieved at operational scale on a sustainable basis, resulting in improved recoveries on overall copper treated.

This process by-passes the need for traditional power intensive smelting of copper sulphide concentrates, offering additional growth opportunities from Sable's operational capability from the processing of mixed copper oxide and copper sulphide concentrates

From Leon’s interview I understand that this is NOT now the case and copper sulphides are separated off to be smelted elsewhere. I might have this wrong and will be pleased to be corrected.

If, however, I am correct I think that investors need to urgently pin down how much copper cathode is being produced from the separated oxides by Jubilee themselves and how much is purely sold on as albeit concentrated, but nevertheless ultimately partially refined sulphides. The profit margin on the latter will obviously be much less than the former. Or to put it another way, are the copper targets of which we hear so much limited to Jubilee’s in-house production from the oxides or do they include the partially refined sulphides which we now understand are shipped off for further processing?

In summary it seems to me that we might give the company the benefit of the doubt that they have indeed achieved a fine/moderate retuning of PGM, chrome, possibly cobalt and, to some extent copper separation/extraction technology. It appears, however, that in respect of copper, this is not the sulphide leaching technology that we and I am sure, Leon had hoped for and indeed stated in that RNS.

Some clarity needed here from the company or otherwise knowledgeable person please.

Hello Seisnav,

I have been digging around and thought you might find this interesting:
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2018072029A1/en

I think that the 'Jubilee process' might involve mixing the heap feeds with oxidised (oxides) and reduced tailings (sulphides) components. A straight redox couple won't, in isolation, be of benefit, but maybe they are adding some form of chelating (metal binding) agent? Alternatively. salt (disrupts the protective sulphide layer) or hydrogen peroxide (cheap and efficient oxidising agent) too are possibilities. I know from experience how hydrogen peroxide goes like a bomb when mixed with sulphides, it is quite something. I guess the problem is applying this on a field-scale.

Or we might be back with bacteria (oxidising), although I think it unlikely.

Interesting stuff.

I fully agree with the comments saying waste heaps are now potentially of much greater value, good point, well made.

Hello Charles,

You might have very long to wait..... it seems as though Chile is holding a gun to the Chinese on the price of copper

https://www.fastmarkets.com/insights/codelco-to-slash-copper-sales-to-china-by-50-amid-production-challenges-sources-say

Hello again,

I have commented on oxidised (oxide) and reduced (sulphide) copper mineralogy last year. I hope that was useful to all. I could repost, but I don’t want to hog the message board.

For now in the light of copper being increasingly viewed as such an essential ‘’ESG metal’’ I thought that I might repeat two points which I hope that you might find relevant.

I am not too knowledgeable in the commercial world. What do you guys think that a breakthrough technology in the highly energy efficient processing of the commonest copper-bearing mineral might be worth? Be interesting to input into a risk/reward ratio, albeit in a qualitative rather than quantitative form :-)

And

I should also mention another related environmental issue. The ongoing Global tailings production is huge. Copper yields are largely less than 1 % and falling, while gold yields are mentioned in low grams per ton. Therefore in the case of copper one ton of reprocessed or recycled material leads to a future reduction of at least 100 tons of tailings. With the greatest respect to the Jubilee management, and in the light of the growing global tailings burden, I do not feel that they have made enough of this point. Maybe ‘green’ copper should carry a premium? Perhaps not, but in any event I think that despite being a generic ‘mining’ company Jubilee might well appeal to some clear-sighted Green Fund managers. The right thing to do from both a financial and ethical standpoint.

Wealth warning…. I am invested here so you might describe me as a ‘ramper’. I hope, however, that these points make some independent sense.

GLA

Good morning all,
I don’t post much, but I thought that this morning’s RNS was worth commentating on. I have extracted a portion below:

Direct leaching of copper sulphide from mixed copper concentrates achieved at operational scale on a sustainable basis, resulting in improved recoveries on overall copper treated.
This process by-passes the need for traditional power intensive smelting of copper sulphide concentrates, offering additional growth opportunities from Sable's operational capability from the processing of mixed copper oxide and copper sulphide concentrates

I wrote this here in July 2021:
Copper comes in a very diverse mineralogy particularly when hosted in tailings. One very common form has proven very difficult to process over the years other than by conventional smelting. I can give more detail if anyone is interested. If Jubilee have cracked this and patented the solution, then it is almost the sky is the limit. If not it will be a big drag on everyone’s ‘copper-cobalt’ based expectations.
So I will either sell-out or double my holdings when the report gives any indications on this topic as I believe it should.
At the time I expanded on these thoughts if you are interested to read more you can pick up on the relevant thread.

Following my own advice I have indeed doubled my investment here this morning.

Two caveats are firstly I have no idea how the warrant expiry situation will impact on the share price in the short term. And secondly, reading between the lines, the newly developed process has a mixed oxide/sulphide input, rather than a pure sulphide input. I expect, however, further refinement will go some distance to addressing this balance.

I also think that this development will firmly place Jubilee on the big boy’s radar. The next few years here promise much.
Good luck all.

Thank you 3cardbrag. How I love that game, do you go blind a lot? More real light-hearted fun than poker I think - which gets far too serious - sorry our US friends. :-)

You clearly have a lot more local and company knowledge than me, thank you for passing it on. I would just point out that it is all very well spraying during reprocessing, but especially given the likely finer grinding involved (leading to an increase in reactive surface area), what is envisaged long-term?

As I say submerged storage is perhaps the most suitable long-term solution. I looked up average rainfall at Kabwe = 36 inches, (London averages 24 inches), which eliminates aridity as a limiting factor. Such a scenario will forestall future wind mobilisation. Personally I really wouldn't want to be invested here if such an approach has not been provisioned for.

Hi all,
On Kabwe – this is a highly contaminated and I would venture to say polluted mining town in the Zambian copper belt. In the past a big international conglomerate operated this mine and extracted multiple fortunes. As they are prone to do when the time appeared right to them they washed their hands of the mine and left behind the most horrendous of messes. The plight of the exposed and lead poisoned children is particularly affecting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54634511
https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/08/23/we-have-be-worried/impact-lead-contamination-childrens-rights-kabwe-zambia

So now Jubilee are involved in this hotspot. To me this represents a fantastic ‘green’ opportunity or the chance of a calamitous disaster. We are back to risk and reward again.
If some of the lead can be removed from the environment so much the better, but that is almost marginal. What the lay person does not perhaps appreciate is that other toxic elements such as arsenic, antimony, cadmium, zinc (possibly) etc. are routinely associated with lead/copper mine dumps. Moreover, no process in 100 % efficient, some lead will remain. Hence, to remediate it is not enough just to extract the lead. I might go further and say that the finer grinding associated with reprocessing might be significantly deleterious to the local inhabitants.
If however, associated with the reprocessing the newly generated waste, there is the conscious and expensive effort of placing the waste in sealed preferably submerged compounds held behind strong seismic- and flood-proof walls an incalculable human benefit will ensue. The risk is that Jubilee inherit somebody else’s problem and are left holding the baby when things go wrong. The benefit is that if done properly the environmental brownie points and associated appeal will be very extensive.
I should also mention another related environmental issue. The ongoing Global tailings production is huge. Copper yields are 1 % and falling while gold yields are mentioned in low grams per ton. Therefore in the case of copper 1 ton of reprocessed or recycled material leads to a future reduction of at least 100 tons of tailings. With the greatest respect to the Jubilee management I do not feel that they have made enough of this point. Maybe ‘green’ copper should carry a premium? Perhaps not, but in any event I think that despite being a generic ‘mining’ company Jubilee might well appeal to some of our Green Fund managers. The right thing to do from both a financial and ethical standpoint.

What do you think?

I have some sketchy thoughts on Kabwe too, should anyone be interested.

You are very welcome. any mistakes are my own.

I am not too knowledgeable in the commercial world. What do you guys think that a breakthrough technology in the energy efficient processing of a major copper-bearing mineral might be worth? Be interesting to input into that risk/reward ratio, albeit in a qualitative rather than quantitative form :-)

Hello again guys,
Jonah, on your point on oxides and sulphides you are broadly correct, but in my view not in detail. From my experience copper oxides (e.g., cuprite, Cu2O) are uncommon certainly in terms of primary mineralisation. They may be commoner on oxidised tailings dumps (secondary mineralisation) and I am sure that they are now being targeted. The main ‘oxidised’ minerals certainly in the context of Cyprus are covellite (Cu(II)S) and chalcocite (Cu(1)2S). I will leave it to you to apply atomic weights to these formulae. Once you have done this you will appreciate that chalcocite is a primary target, real low-hanging fruit. This has been the case sine the ancients and it is likely that the Phoenicians and the Romans very much had it in there sites together with the rarer native or pure copper (Cu). These are guys are easy to smelt or heap leach in the field. They will certainly be at the top of the target list. So too will be copper sulphates of various formulae (e.g., CuSO4), unfortunately these are evaporites and hence transitory in the field.
Regrettably in this context most of the Cypriot (and global) copper is contained within copper iron sulphides particularly the mineral chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and to a much lesser extent bornite (Cu5FeS4). And in the case of Cyprus in particular, contained within the pyrite (FeS2) lattice. I would hazard a guess that the latter is at the bottom of any target list by some margin. Hence beware of published yields where there is significant pyrite. It is with chalcopyrite that the (global) problem and opportunity lies. Currently, it is very difficult to efficiently extract the copper except by means of a high energy input (e.g., by smelting). There is extensive academic literature on this and here is an example:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2238785419301553
Just the abstract and introduction is needed in this context.
If you are interested in the mineralogy of Cyprus and the various targeted tailings. I recommend here:
https://www.mindat.org/loc-16569.html
This site is very good in an international context too.
I suspect if things work out well we will also be soon talking of zinc (Zn), gold (Au) and possibly silver (Ag) in the Cyprus context. There is extensive chrome there too, but I believe this to be distinct from the copper mineralisation.
As I say it all depends on the efficiency and energy use of the Jubilee technology. Place your bets…….
I hope this helps.

Good morning all,

Still no report, I am sure it will contain highly significant news. I have done very well here over the last year, I owe a large thank you to the management and operatives.

I realise that as we every investment one must consider the risk/reward ratio and in my view we have arrived at a crucial time in this company’s evolution. We all know about the political and metal price risk/reward, but in my view there is another key factor.

Copper comes in a very diverse mineralogy particularly when hosted in tailings. One very common form has proven very difficult to process over the years other than by conventional smelting. I can give more detail if anyone is interested. If Jubilee have cracked this and patented the solution, then it is almost the sky is the limit. If not it will be a big drag on everyone’s ‘copper-cobalt’ based expectations.
So I will either sell-out or double my holdings when the report gives any indications on this topic as I believe it should.

Good luck all.
Good morning all,

Still no report, I am sure it will contain highly significant news. I have done very well here over the last year, I owe a large thank you to the management and operatives.

I realise that as we every investment one must consider the risk/reward ratio and in my view we have arrived at a crucial time in this company’s evolution. We all know about the political and metal price risk/reward, but in my view there is another key factor.

Copper comes in a very diverse mineralogy particularly when hosted in tailings. One very common form has proven very difficult to process over the years other than by conventional smelting. I can give more detail if anyone is interested. If Jubilee have cracked this and patented the solution then it is almost the sky is the limit. If not it will be a big drag on everyone’s ‘copper-cobalt’ based expectations.
So I will either sell-out or double my holdings when the report gives any indications on this topic as I believe it should.

Good luck all.

Hedgehog, thanks for the the link replace exec with operating and have a look while casting your mind back to my undisputed criticism of recent actions or inactions re.geological sampling.

Hedgehog, yes the board/management has changed, but only partially. Two new non-execs appointed one of whom is an accountant to add to the accountant already there for some considerable time.

The chief exec officer, a geologist has been in post since 2015. The chairman a mining man, has been on the board since 2015.
So yes actions speak louder than words and the actions of the current and the previous (and now safely retired) directors are There for all to judge. Sell

Hi Hedgehog,
I beg to differ. The board presided over a debacle while drawing healthy salaries and possibly, pension contributions.
To give one example the processing of unexpectedly low grade tailings betrays insufficient or poorly distributed sampling. There is on an onsite lab I believe.
A cynical soul might well smell a rat, I do not. Beyond doubt however, is that our Californian Hedge Fund friends will soon be laughing all the way to the bank at shareholders rather than BOD expense.