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I should have also said that in the early part of the last financial year the feed grade was reported as being lower:

“ Operational PGM efficiencies came under pressure due to a scheduled drop in PGM feed grade over the initial four months from third party suppliers, which has since returned to previous higher levels that has continued during the current period.”

So I think this is certainly a contributing factor to the number of ounces produced.

If you look at the theoretical chrome processing capacity as stated in the WHI research note (for Inyoni, Windsor and Windsor 8 combined) it is 1,384,800 tonnes chrome concentrate / year. The figure reported for this year is 1,289,890 tonnes. That equates to 93% of the theoretical capacity, which considering power issues I think is pretty good. I noticed that the last quarter was higher than the previous quarters by 25-30,000 tonnes, which might be due to the backup power at the chrome plants having an impact, or it might be due to the newly announced contract which according to the RNS was already producing in June.

As for the PGM's I don't know. If the last quarter was in line with the previous 3 quarters then Inyoni would have produced roughly 36,200 ounces, which is about 82% of the theoretical capacity. I assume part of that is due to the chrome plants not hitting capacity but it could be any number of reasons, poorer feed grades, lower than expected recoveries... It's something I'd like Leon to explain for sure.

I thought it might be useful to look at where we stand with the prices of our current metal products:

https://shorturl.at/glJ35

I've added a blue band on the copper and cobalt charts which indicate a 'break-even' point based on what is known about production costs.

For copper, that is US$4,800-5,200 based on a 10,000 tonne refinery operating at full capacity. As we can see current copper pricing makes this potentially highly profitable, especially once the northern refinery is established.

For cobalt the upper limit is set at US$30,000, this is based on production costs of US$18,000, the upper limit suggested by Leon. It also assumes a payable percentage of 60%. If you are not aware, the cobalt hydroxide price is currently referenced to the price of cobalt metal with a percentage payable based on quality, availability etc. The minimum number I've seen quoted recently is 60% because there is a surplus in the market. In the near term the market is expected to be in surplus, however everyone seems to have been caught out because many of the smaller producers in the DRC have switched to copper due to low cobalt prices, as well as a hold up in the large shipment expected from CMOC in the DRC. In the longer term, demand is expected to outstrip supply, so stockpiling cobalt concentrate now for production later is money in the bank.

Chrome prices are still high at around US$280-300 / tonne. I've been trying to quantify exactly what this means for earnings, which is difficult because of the way they report it as a by-product now, but having done a few calculations I believe that at current prices we would be looking at somewhere between US$20-25 million per year in earnings.

PGM's, as we know, are well down from the highs which were the result of Anglo American declaring force majeure due to an explosion at their processing plant as well as uncertainties over covid. I don't expect we will see those kind of highs again unless the power situation in South Africa continues to worsen but there are the potential for higher platinum prices could still see a reversal in the basket price. A deficit is forecast for later this year and there is growing interest in use of platinum for the green hydrogen industry as well as in new EV battery chemistry.

My point still stands.

I have no respect for people who turn up on boards where they are not invested and call the CEO a charlatan but there you go.

As for Bushytailed, who constantly makes accusations but can never back it up with any facts… well I think we all know what he is.

Gazzleberry, there’s nothing novel about the technology that JLP are using, it’s all pretty standard stuff. The process flow is the key, and that will change with every tailings dump.

“ Jubilee today provides its operational update for the year ending June 2023 for its operations in South Africa and Zambia. It ended up increasing the amount of PGMs it produced to 42.5koz (from 41.5koz in the prior year), 1.29Mt chrome concentrates (1.21) and 2.9kt copper (2.3kt). Looking forward Jubilee intends to expand. In South Africa on the chrome-PGM business, it has already informed the market of a new 0.36Mt chrome concentrator project (RNS 6.06.2023) which is under construction; with an option to take it to 0.72Mt. We also have sight of a new 25koz/year PGM plant on the Eastern limb of the Bushveld with construction expected in the last quarter CY 2023. The new plant, and associated chrome beneficiation plant will expand Jubilee’s reach to access a further source of PGM-rich tailings which are too expensive to transport to Inyoni on the Western Limb. This is a valuable add-on to the business in our opinion. On the copper business in Zambia, Jubilee intends to expand the Roan concentrator with a $8.5m upgrade to take advantage of the new power and water connections it installed, to raise capacity and allow for a full suite of waste and ROM materials to be processed. The company states it is still determining the best fit refinery for its Northern Refinery strategy and remains committed to raising copper production to 25kt by 2025. To this end it is continuing the on-going pilot trials to optimise the targeted process solution for the treatment of the range of northern copper and cobalt wastes. Jubilee expects construction of a large scale pilot facility to commence during September 2023. Forward guidance for FY2024 has been set at 42koz PGMs, 1.45Mt chrome concentrate and 5.8kt copper. These appear undemanding given what we understand about the business and we expect the new capacity under construction to allow for these figures to increase in FY2025. WHI View: The Jubilee investment story is multi-commodity production from two mining jurisdictions using good technical control of processing technology to process waste materials (and Run Of Mine ore); low-cost production into a high price environment promises strong revenues and profits and high returns to shareholders, once the plan is firmly in place. Finalising the copper strategy in Zambia still remains the game changer in our opinion as the Central African Copperbelt has many resources which could eventually be processed in the manner proposed by Jubilee. Although, in our view the continued potential in South Africa and the ongoing capacity additions on the chrome-PGM side of the business should not be underestimated in terms of their ability to increase returns. “

Pretty solid results, more or less what was expected. South Africa PGM production exceeding the very cautious guidance, probably due to exercising the JV with Northam. The new Chrome contract is already producing saleable chrome concentrate and (presumably) more PGM enriched material for processing. They are estimating this will add roughly 200,000 tonnes to the annual chrome production, but with earnings on that at approximately 5x our tolling rate that's the equivalent of adding another 1 million tonnes of production.

Copper production slightly below guidance, I guess the impact of upgrading the front end of Roan to allow processing of tailings and RoM was slightly worse than expected. I wish they had provided more detail on exactly what Roan is producing at the moment. I think, reading between the lines, we are going to see serious disruption to the copper production during the upgrade this quarter and possibly yet another ramp up after that, with the bulk of copper production coming toward the second half of the year. Could be wrong.

Interesting that Roan will be producing three separate concentrate streams after the upgrade, which can be further processed or sold into the market directly. I presume two of those are copper sulphide and oxide, not sure what the third would be?

Still nothing further on the Northern refinery deal.... as usual as many questions as answers with Leon!

Https://www.miningweekly.com/article/new-mali-mining-law-could-boost-state-local-interest-in-projects-to-35-2023-07-14

There’s nothing 100% tying us to the Chambeshi Metals deal but all of the evidence points to that. Leon said in the last conference call that the President had spoken publicly about aiming to have negotiations between the Zambian Revenue Authority and the current refinery owner concluded by April. When I found the interview on youtube, the President was talking about Chambishi Metals. Leon has said the Mufulira S l a g project that we have bid for fits perfectly with our refinery plans. Chambishi Metals has a smelter which has already been used in the past for processing refinery s l a g.

Obviously the Mopani situation is important, if ownership changes hands, will we still be in line for the Mufulira project? My feeling is that the government will still retain an interest in Mopani and they will want the project to go ahead. Until we get confirmation either way, its all just speculation though.

Paul Kabuswe gave a press conference this morning. They are expecting to announce details on Mopani and KCM negotiations within this month. There was also a question on the status of Chambeshi Metals, the answer was pretty much what Leon has said before, negotiations are very advanced with the current owners.

Amazing how much time BT spends researching JLP figures and yet he seems to struggle to actually get any of them right. Odd that eh?

Up nearly 7% in China today…

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

I like the mine site integration of the new chrome processing agreement and it’s something which can be endlessly replicated if the demand is there. It also begs the question, if they can do it with chrome why not with copper and with cobalt? Might we see Jubilee start to partner with the big copper miners in Zambia in the same way, so that only fully processed material goes to the tailings dam? I think its only a matter of time before we see something like that happen.

Orionminerals used to post as Higgin. Exactly the same type of posts, he’s not even smart enough to try and be a bit different. Best filtered.

The only way to get rid of him is for everyone to keep reporting his posts until he gets suspended or the account is deleted.

Please don’t get dragged into playing along with him, he just wants to fill the board with nonsense to bury actual news.

Cobalt price in China up another US$700/tonne since Friday, now averaging US$37,200.

As promised, for those who may have missed the news:

FIL Investment International has now passed Slater Investments as the largest shareholder, ADDING 67 MILLION SHARES since the last update. Canaccord Genuity Wealth Mgt also added a few million.

Don’t worry, despite you-know-who trying to hide the news, I’ll be sure to repost it on Monday… just in case any genuine investors missed it 😁