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Mikie, the minister of mines gave a press conference yesterday in which he said that an announcement on KCM and Mopani was coming “sooner than you think”. I’ve no idea how soon that might be, hopefully days!

I was watching to see if he mentioned anything about Chambishi but nothing was said. I’ve noticed a couple of changes just recently on websites that I keep an eye on, which make me think something could be happening but I won’t say any more on that until we get something official.

Chester, in the last RNS Leon stated that they had stopped producing cobalt hydroxide until the price had started to improve. The positive is they will still be creating the intermediate cobalt concentrate as part of the copper process and storing it ready to process when the demand is increasing. We can quickly scale up production which is something a cobalt miner can’t do.

Yes in the short term supply has been expanded significantly while at the same time thrifting in EV batteries / lower sales in mobile phones and other devices has reduced demand, but in the longer term, the demand for EV batteries will vastly outstrip supply.

If interested this panel discussion from last years Cobalt Institute forum is quite informative on how the analysts see the cobalt market developing.

https://youtu.be/5ikxUJ6mF40

Press conference from yesterday. Just a bit of background on cadastre and plans for exploration and mapping. “40 tenements identified” for further exploration with partners. (From 12:00 minutes)

https://youtu.be/Af6sBRytM6Y

Https://youtu.be/NosRjGIfsuQ

Keynote Speech from last years Cobalt Institute forum. Chambishi Metals gets a mention at around 8:00 minutes.

“ Markets particularly aim is probably worse ites been 4 many decades” Wrong

“coppers fall back not helped either” Irrelevant

“ deal is going be signed” The deal is already signed.

“ it's if they can get drilling underway this year” Ready to go as soon as the CP’s are finalised.

Apart from that, very good.

Shares now trading at just over $5.10

I think anyone who’s followed the PGM prices this year isn’t going to be surprised by those results but it’s important to put that in context, we were coming off historic highs caused by PGM shortages in South Africa due to smelter maintenance and other factors. We made our money at the time from those highs, enabling us to press ahead with Zambia at a much quicker pace than we could otherwise have done. Now we have the opportunity to see the fruits of that investment in Roan and Sable, which again will lay the groundwork for expansion in the North. The scale of the opportunity in Zambia will eventually dwarf the South African operations if things progress as expected, and with pretty much everyone agreed that the long term outlook for copper is very positive, that can only be a good thing.

Https://youtu.be/2YecblSO2XE

I know Leon mentioned that the President had been talking about our refinery situation in an interview on the Copperbelt, I think this must be the one. From about 1:15:00 he discusses the situation with the mines and also with the re-opening of Chambishi Metals once the issues with taxes are resolved. He also connects this with the bigger picture of a new EV battery facility being built in Ndola (where Roan is).

For me this removes any doubt that our target refinery is indeed Chambishi Metals and this directly connects with the Mufulira s l a g project which Chambishi Metals is well equipped to process. It’s obvious as well that this is an issue viewed as being of national importance and is receiving the attention it deserves. HH said at the time they were targeting a conclusion of the negotiations by end of first quarter. Let’s hope things are now well progressed.

Interesting that Nick said they are looking for opportunities which are in production or close to production. It backs up what he was quoted as saying in a previous interview that he sees Arc developing into a mid-tier producer eventually.

I just watched it Mikie! It was just a general update really, nothing specific. The only thing that was slightly relevant to us was the mention of the ‘Presidential Delivery Unit’ (PDU), which is designed to identify and unlock obstacles to business development. I’m hoping they are on the case with ZRA to address the tax situation with our target refinery. At least we know HH is well aware of the situation and is keen to see it resolved.

You can watch it here if you really want to:

https://fb.watch/kBNUzcuUso/

Yas, I wouldn’t be concerned about that application, many licenses have these, have a look at African Pioneer to the west or the large license just south of us for example. The fact is the due diligence has been completed and the JV signed which means any doubts about license ownership have been satisfied. All we need now is for the licenses to be transferred into the new company, Unico Minerals and the JV set up.

Https://www.miningweekly.com/article/eskom-warns-of-stage-8-loadshedding-this-winter-but-insists-risk-of-blackout-is-low-2023-05-18

https://www.miningweekly.com/article/copper-concentrate-market-to-face-steep-deficit-from-2025-2023-05-18

The share price action pretty much confirms what I was thinking, it seems to be tracking the PGM prices down which is pretty stupid when you think about it as most of the production for this year will already have been banked! I was reading the latest Matthey PGM report which was released on Monday and Rhodium is forecast to have weaker demand due to innovations in the glass making industry so I guess thats why its weakening. They are also forecasting a platinum deficit and increasing prices there during this year. The big unknown is still the effect of load shedding on the miners in South Africa. Will they be able to continue safely operating underground with the power situation? Will shut-downs of the smelters create a backlog of material waiting to be processed?

We need copper to take up the slack with weaker PGM prices likely to continue unless the situation in SA gets worse, and hopefully that is happening even if it isn’t yet being reflected in the share price. As long as we are making that A grade copper cathode then the share price will correct at some point! It’s frustrating for sure but I’m still confident of the longer term outlook.

Over to Leon… an update on progress would be appreciated!

Aggr0memnon, the Cobre drill sites look to be about 90km from our nearest license so I don’t think we can read too much into those results. Hopefully we will have some of our own to look at soon, Nick said in the next few weeks during the investor call and thats nearly a month ago.

The news from China coming out of the lockdown wasn’t as good as predicted today, recovery likely slower than expected so impact on metals prices across the board. Not everything has to do with JLP! Still think we’ll see a decent bounce on positive news from Roan/ Sable.

I’ve just compared the current Cadastre status with a snapshot I took in March. There have been few if any new active licenses added since then, despite the recent announcement from the Ministry of Mines about the high number of applications already granted (~60% of LEL’S already dealt with). This indicates how far behind they are with updating the Cadastre, so I think we are likely to get an RNS before we see anything finalised there.

I doubt it, he pops up whenever the copper price drops to try and deramp a bit. Strange but he never shows up when the price increases!

Thanks Dorfan,

Yes at the moment more regular news (as was promised) would probably help calm the market a bit. I noticed that Samancor is being proactive about the power issues with plans to build a 100MW solar plant for one of their sites (Tubatse Ferrochrome I believe): https://www.world-energy.org/article/31864.html

If Inyoni continues to perform as it has then we should be able to comfortably exceed the 38,000 ounce guidance. I think 40,000-42,000 should be achievable, depending on how much 3rd party capacity we use.

I’m expecting an announcement on Roan this month, it should reach commercial production in May according to the last update so hopefully we will hear some news on that in the next couple of weeks. I would assume that Leon would take the opportunity to update on Inyoni at the same time.

Lol, you clearly haven’t got a scooby about Arc if you don’t know why thats relevant. You might not understand why Avanti Gold Corp is relevant to Arc as well but it certainly is, their share price is up about 3x since our share agreement.

The copper price is irrelevant to Arc, you might not have noticed but we aren’t producing any! Anyway the price is still very high historically… maybe to a bit of research like Ella does 🐀

Https://youtu.be/FcafyIUsX8Q