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As well as rhodium, cobalt has also been on the up in recent days, refined cobalt is up about $3,000/tonne from it’s lows, I don’t know how that filters through to demand for cobalt hydroxide.

I was reading that new car sales in China had surged in the last month on the back of the economic stimulus, with both EV’s and non-EV’s growing. That might explain the sudden demand for both rhodium and cobalt.

Morning BB,

I think things have evolved a bit since the original MoU was announced, originally the plan was for Jubilee to take over a part of the Mopani plant that was no longer in use and refurbish it as the Northern Refinery. Now it seems Mopani (the Government) want to maximise the available assets to increase production, using feed sourced from small scale / artisanal miners as well as local tailings. I think that the satellite ‘front-end’ processing units that Jubilee have recently announced may be a part of that plan, acting as hubs for the small scale miners for pre-concentration before being taken to Mopani.

This must have formed part of the discussions with the potential new investors because I don’t think they would have signed the deal before the new investor was announced otherwise. Yes I believe the strategic new investor just refers to the sale of the majority stake in Mopani, from what I’ve seen in interviews Hichilema wants ZCCM to retain a significant stake in the company.

As for the s l a g processing contract I still believe that will be done at Chambishi Metals but hopefully we will find that out one way or the other pretty soon. We do know that Chambishi Metals is re-opening “soon” (according to Mines Minister Kabuswe).

Https://x.com/tertiaryplc/status/1714543279717363797?s=61

The nearby Kalengwa deposit had an average grade of nearly 10% and was discovered by drilling a coincident gravity anomaly / copper in soil anomaly, the same situation that exists at Mushima North.

I don’t often spend much time looking at trades as I tend to invest for the long term but having seen what a cesspit these boards can be I’ve started to study them a bit more closely. I was convinced a while back that there was an institution buying, despite the share price trending down and it turned out to be the case. I’m equally convinced that someone has a large buy order in here now. Watch out for lots of small trades at or just below 6p. Also the trick of having a couple of apparent large sells at the start of the trading day is a common one, I’ve noticed before that these sells often show up as cancelled trades later in the day. Throw in a blatant deramper like bushytailed….

I had a quick look at his numbers and the projected revenue for this year is almost identical to mine, I’m a bit more optimistic on earnings than he is but will have a better idea when the Q1 numbers are released. We should have a pretty decent first quarter, with fully ramped up copper production for almost the whole period, earnings increasing from the new chrome contract, reduced transport costs with more PGM material produced locally to process at Inyoni.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more news soon on the Northern Refinery.

I think the investor that is mentioned is for Mopani. That deal is due to be announced shortly.

Brilliant news, will need to read that again but there’s more than the s l a g project in there it looks like the original MoU is still active:

“ Additionally, there is potential for the SPV's mandate to expand, encompassing the treatment of material from tailing dumps and oxide ore sourced from small scale miners. This strategy aims to optimise the utilisation of MCM plants currently under care and maintenance located in Kitwe.”

I think this will be the start of something much bigger!

It was the same newspaper that first reported the Mopani tender so I’d guess that they have a source at Mopani. As for the money, who knows if thats accurate or not but the we already know the financing for the Northern project is coming from banks, Slater has already let that one out of the bag.

It’s on the front page of the “Times of Zambia” newspaper so I think it’s genuine. If we don’t get anything from the company tomorrow I’ll contact them to ask if they are going to confirm it… it’s most definitely price sensitive information!

The original Mopani tender was to recover approximately 115,000 tonnes of copper and 30,000 tonnes of cobalt from the Mufulira s l a g dumps.

Nice find! This must be the tender that was mentioned by Ollie in the Annual Report:

“ The drive to expand on the current secured resources of nearly 300 million tonnes of tailings has made slow progress through delays in the approval by authorities of various assets going through official tender processes.”

I’ve been waiting for this to be announced! My guess is the 250 million investment will include buying the Northern Refinery. Chambishi Metals and this Mufulira project are interdependent I think, because Chambishi has the capability to process the s l a g already using a Mintek furnace. Everything finally coming together it seems.

The price will vary a bit from market to market but I see rhodium is up another 8% in China today. It seems like the Chinese economy is waking up after the week long holidays. Even cobalt is having a bit of a rally!

Thanks Dorfan,

I do think they could have made more of the rise in chrome earnings by publishing the Q4 numbers separately, including them in the full year accounts disguises the impact to some degree. They did compare H1 and H2 in the conference call but that didn’t really show the full potential. Of course that might have been deliberate while they are still negotiating further chrome contracts, not wanting to reveal the hand too early. I think the same is true of copper. They were asked about costs / copper tonne in the call and said they were aiming at US$6,000, this is clearly way higher than reality, we have already seen it much lower than that, again I think they want to keep the cards close to the chest while negotiating further copper contracts. I’m still very positive on our prospects, even more so with the increase in rhodium.

Jonah they mentioned that they were looking at JV’s to process the extra ounces rather than build another PGM plant on the Eastern Limb. Of course that might change if the basket price starts to increase again as has been suggested. If rhodium does increase significantly they may decide to revisit the second PGM plant. The chrome plant seems to be going ahead as planned according to the RNS. Transport costs are definitely weighing on the margin so it probably still makes economic sense to do that.

To be clear every US$1,000 / ounce increase in rhodium price equates to US$3m earnings. If this is the start of a sustained rise like the article was suggesting then this is very significant, especially as we are starting to increase the number of PGM ounces available to process.

Chrome ore is from here:

https://www.ferroalloynet.com/chromeore/analysis-1.html

Updated once a week, currently US$295-305 for 40-42% grade

From here:

https://www.metal.com/Other-Precious-Metals/201102250583

Up another 9% today.

Rhodium up again in China today… seems to be on a bit of a charge at the moment!

I'm amazed anyone still gives Peggy the time of day, he's a troll, just here because he gets off on winding people up. He only ever posts on Arc apart from one time when he said he had sold up and was moving on... guess what... he started fishing for a bite on other boards. He probably didn't think anyone would bother checking but I did 😎 Just filter him and do the board a favour.