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Https://www.miningweekly.com/article/miners-tap-waste-for-critical-minerals-2023-06-28

"The sub 0.5% copper resources of tomorrow will be just as attractive as the 2% copper resources of yesterday, delivering the critical minerals the world needs to decarbonise at low cost," said Laura Tyler, chief technical officer at top global miner BHP.

"This means the mine waste of the past, will become some of the new resources of the future," she told delegates to a conference in Brisbane on Wednesday.

Most of the Large Scale Mining License applications which where granted in the last round of updates were pretty old applications, however there was one from a near neighbour of ours, 33216-HQ-LML, which was applied for on 13/12/2022 Our LML applications went in 10 days later on 23/12/2022 so hopefully they will be considered / granted in the next round of updates.

If you need to ask me how much revenue JLP makes from rhodium you should be asking yourself if you’ve done enough research (assuming you are actually an investor). I’m certainly not going to do it for you. The correlation between the rhodium price and the share price movement is obvious.

The copper ramp up is in the public domain, you just have to be able to read, no scientific qualifications necessary.

The share price is being driven by the rhodium price, I think that is pretty clear, at least to me. As a scientist by training I always go with the data rather than vague and deliberately misleading statements such as bushymilk's "entire SA companies are under huge selling pressure" (what does that even mean?).

At the moment there is little or no accounting for copper in the share price. We are now completing the ramp up of our first copper concentrator and yet you are telling me that now is the time to be selling? Surely now is the time to be buying. Yes PGM's are weak at the moment but that will have little effect on the full year results as the year is almost at an end. Our cash reserves should be significantly up, we have a new cash stream going online, chrome and PGM production is being ramped up in the short term in order to offset the price weakness in PGM's, chrome prices are very high, we are negotiating much higher chrome margins.... each to their own of course but I have no intention of selling a single share and if I can make the funds available I'll be buying more.

Thanks for the 'advice' though.

I don't think so, they are not listed to attend.

For anyone interested here's a live stream of todays conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6PTykc_ww

For anyone interested here's a live stream of todays conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF6PTykc_ww

Leon might be in London for the London Indaba which started today. Many of the mining heads are there for a 2 day event so it’s possible he’s attending. Might just be coincidence of course.

Block selling?! Are you having a laugh? I’ve spent more than that on a good night out.

It would be a nice little boost if it’s true that we could exceed copper guidance. Assuming we achieve the same PGM ounces as in the previous 3 quarters we would already hit the guidance, that’s without any ounces achieved through the JV… so it’s entirely possible we could exceed PGM guidance too.

Leon actually said:

"Final design reviews for our Northern Refining Strategy are underway to confirm the implementation schedule and required investment. I hope to provide further clarity on this at the completion of the revised capital program which is expected by the full year close in June."

So we might hear something this week or early next week.

Whatever OrionMinerals suggests seems to have been contoured up in his own head.

Why are you asking your question on a public forum? Do you expect us to provide you with advice?

My advice would be not to pay any attention to the share price and focus on the very clear evidence of major copper mineralisation. That’s what Anglo American are doing. They are not committing to spend tens of millions of dollars on drilling just on the off chance, they have access to much more information on the licenses than we are privy to. Frankly I would be more surprised if they didn’t find a major copper deposit (or more) than if they did!

You’ve got to ask the question why have Anglo American persisted in negotiating on this deal (and NvS and Rothschild have negotiated HARD on shareholders behalf) over several years when there are other options out there….? Trust the process and ignore the noise… they do not have your best interests at heart. 🐷

I recommend reading this report if you haven’t already done so, it’s very clear on the reasons why the price of rhodium is falling. When the price of a commodity goes too high to be economically sustainable, it tends to drive innovation. In this case the Chinese have found ways to substitute platinum for rhodium in alloys used in the fibre glass industry.

https://matthey.com/documents/161599/404086/PGM+Market+Report+May23.pdf/2f048a72-74a8-8b23-f18e-c875000ed76b?t=1684144507321

Some key quotes:

“ Ongoing sales of rhodium by Chinese glass fibre producers have added liquidity to the market over the past two years, but until recently the price impact had been muted, because Chinese market participants were generally willing to hold surplus rhodium. This willingness evaporated in early 2023, when falling prices prompted Chinese rhodium holders to dispose of their metal, often at a discount to world market prices.”

“ Lower rhodium prices could ultimately result in alloy switching programmes being halted or even reversed. Despite technical advances including the use of grain-stabilised alloys, the use of low-rhodium alloys is associated with reduced equipment lifetimes and shorter production campaigns. This means that the economic incentive to substitute rhodium with platinum diminishes well before price parity between the two metals is reached. However, at mid-April 2023 rhodium and platinum prices ($7,500 and $1,050 respectively), the adoption of alloys with a reduced rhodium content is still a cost-effective strategy.”

So if the deficit in platinum does materialise it’s likely to favour the use of rhodium again.

It’s worth reading the whole report it you have the time, there is a lot of relevant information in there.

Https://www.miningweekly.com/article/wpic-reiterates-platinum-deficit-forecast-2023-06-23

There are a few bits of news we are waiting on which could act as a catalyst;

In South Africa:

licensing approval to start on the Eastern Limb chrome plant, which will add something in the region of 400,000 tonnes / year of chrome concentrate capacity and allow us to process EL material locally saving massively on transport costs.

Decision on Eastern Limb PGM facility (brownfield / greenfield) which will add a further 25,000 PGM ounce capacity.

In Zambia:

Progress on Roan expansion which will potentially more than double the current throughput rate.

Completion of the deal to acquire the Northern Refinery, which was just waiting for an agreement over outstanding tax between the government and the current owner. We should at least hope to get an update on the status of this and if we have an alternative planned if it doesn’t work out.

In my filter list I now have a Toad, a Fish, a Monkey, 2 Pigs (including Peggy 🐷), and now a Donkey! It’s getting like Animal Farm in there.

Some of us are playing a longer game donkey, in the end lets see who was right… I’m pretty sure Peggy and all the other fakes like your good self won’t be around to apologise 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷 🐷

There are some things as a company that you have no control over, such as commodity prices. There are other things that are within the companies control to a greater or lesser extent, such as load shedding, production levels, margins and costs. What I like is that the company is being pro-active in the areas they can do something about:

Increasing chrome production target from 1.2m tonnes to 2.0m tonnes within the next 6-12 months. With chrome prices strong when PGM prices are lower it makes sense to ramp up capacity to offset weakness in the PGM basket.

Increasing PGM concentrate by a further ~20,000 ounces / year within the next 6-12 months (PGM processing capacity yet to be determined)

Increasing margin on chrome by approximately 5 times based on current chrome prices. This will have significant impact on the bottom line by further reducing cost / PGM ounce.

Looking for new deals with miners where infrastructure can be installed at the mine site, further reducing transport costs.

Continuing to roll out backup power at chrome plants to reduce the impact of any load shedding. (there will be some costs associated with this obviously).

Transport costs between Eastern Limb and Western Limb are very high (almost US$200 / PGM ounce at the last update), I'm sure they will be looking to reduce that ASAP by processing chrome on the Eastern Limb rather than trucking it across country, further reducing our cost / PGM ounce.

The fact is our cost / PGM ounce is already very low and even with a soft basket price operations are still profitable. Eventually the PGM basket will recover and we will be in an even better position to take advantage of it. In my view its about building capacity and keeping control of costs right now and we are doing both of those things.

It looks like a concerted effort by someone to force the SP down, the last few days a big sell at the end of / start of the day to try and shake a few more shares free. It makes no difference really, any attempt to buy serious volumes would immediately cause the SP to head north again. It's easy to manipulate when there's very little volume being moved.

I should have said that I do think copper WAS priced in to the share price, here's an updated plot which shows when the Northern copper strategy was announced. If that hadn't been announced then our SP would have fallen just as quickly as SLP's did when the PGM basket dropped. Over time enthusiasm has wained and the copper effect has wained with it. The power and water problems obviously didn't help either. The pick up in SLP share price around Oct 2022 was due to positive financial results being announced.

https://tinyurl.com/p8scdhwn

It stands to reason that the main share price driver for a pure PGM producer would be the PGM basket right? Even the truth deniers like bushy, butternut and Scott would have to admit that:

https://tinyurl.com/ycx9ffjj

It doesn't take much imagination to see how the graph would look without the positive financials for SLP.... now apply that to the previous graph... see what I mean? I think copper is yet to be priced back in again.