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Mikie, to be honest I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to chrome although I do remember reading that most of our production is at a fixed margin whereas one plant (Windsor 8?) is at market rate. Can’t really comment on that without looking into it a bit more!

Obviously there will be differences from company to company, I haven’t looked at why SLP is currently doing better, just emphasising the very obvious correlation. For what it’s worth, no I don’t think much if any value has been attributed to copper / cobalt yet because we haven’t yet proven that we can produce it at scale. In the previous results we produced about 1,400 Tonnes of copper, most of which would have been leached from 3rd party material, not from Roan. If we can show that we are hitting targets at Roan then I would expect the SP to start picking up significantly.

As Scott has failed to provide any context to the drop in share price I thought I’d add some.

What has been the main driver of our earnings up to this point? Obviously it’s Chrome and PGM production. What has happened to the value of the PGM basket since May 2021? It has halved. What has happened to the share price since May 2021? It has halved. If you think this is just coincidence have a look at this comparison, where I’ve plotted % change in JPL share price and SLP share price with % change in rhodium price as an indicator of the PGM basket (rhodium is by far the biggest influence on the basket price at more than 50%):
https://tinyurl.com/26pyrw8v

People are quick to blame the company for this when clearly it’s an external factor, “its Colin Bird! It’s Leon! It’s the warrants! It’s lack of quarterly reporting!”. The reality is our main source of income has dropped massively from more than US$2,000 / ounce at the peak to currently less than US$900 / ounce. Also in that time production costs have increased. Is it really any surprise that the SP has dropped?

Of course if you bought in at the peak that’s not really any comfort! The good news is that over the next 6 months copper and cobalt earnings are set to outstrip earnings from PGM’s and chrome which should drive up the share price significantly.

As for the company stagnating…. I don’t even know where to begin with that! Have a read of the recent presentation and RNS’s and you will soon see that that is nonsense. A game-changing new approach to processing sulphides and mixed ore by leaching, negating the need for smelting, a new ‘rapid leach’ method which will reduce acid consumption by a third (our biggest cost), building the Roan Concentrator and achieving full production, now ramping up cobalt hydroxide production…. Is that really stagnating?!

The decision to restart cobalt production at Mopani could well be being driven by the governments plans for EV battery production. Nickel is also an important element in the production of batteries so there would be a ready local market for both products (Nkana is about 50km from the site of the planned EV battery plant). The potential synergies for Mopani and Jubilee are clear.

A bit more info about the Mopani cobalt plant:

From Wikipedia:
“In 2013, Mopani invested US$ 27 million to upgrade its Nkana Cobalt Plant which will result in an increase in production capacity from 2,800 tonnes to 7,000 tonnes of cobalt metal per annum.”

https://www.lusakatimes.com/2013/02/26/mopani-invests-kr-142-million-in-upgrade-of-cobalt-plant-securing-more-than-300-jobs/

“ The upgrade of the plant will enable processing of intermediate cobalt hydroxide from third-party concentrates to produce cobalt metal. The Cobalt plant will also have expanded cobalt electrowining capacity, full nickel removal and manganese rejection process and improved filtration technology.

The investment will also facilitate production of a nickel by-product from third party concentrate feed. The plant is expected to be commissioned in June 2014.”

If Mopani do bring the plant back into production it could provide a route to upgrade Jubilee’s Cobalt Hydroxide to high purity cobalt metal with nickel as a potential by product.

If only we had a way of exchanging information without sharing in it with the wrong people eh? :-)

Anyone know anything about license TP977 which covers two areas extending NE / SW from our license PL135/2017 in Botswana? It was an Alvis-Crest license area which expired last September and is listed as ‘Suspended’. Given the close proximity to Zone 5 and the Zone 9 drilling area I would have thought it would be of interest to someone but there are no applications listed on it.

It’s been pretty quiet with the Cadastre since Indaba started… maybe they all went to Cape Town for a jolly?! Time to get back to work now…. :-)

HG, as far as I am aware the only Cobalt plant that Mopani have is at Nkana and that uses an electro-winning process to produce plate cobalt as well as plate copper. It has been on care and maintenance for a number of years due to the cobalt price making it uneconomic. There was an announcement last year that Mopani planned to start producing cobalt again although the price has dropped considerably since then… maybe Jubilee want to take over a part of that plant?

If its not the Nkana plant then the one at Chambeshi makes sense, I guess it depends how keen ERG are to offload it and what condition it’s in.

Just listened to the Q&A section of the presentation again and Leon did say that the refinery they are looking to acquire would have a copper and cobalt circuit so they could scale up to potentially 40,000 tonnes of copper from both combined… so I didn’t imagine it!

I thought I remembered something about them looking to have two separate copper refineries to increase the capacity but I couldn’t find reference to that anywhere… did I imagine that?

One thing I was thinking about is with the new sulphide leaching approach, presumably they would want to implement that in the northern refinery too, which might involve more negotiations and maybe even redesign or expansion of the current plant… just guesswork on that though. Hopefully an RNS in the morning or early next week to clear things up.

My understanding is that they are looking to separate the copper and cobalt refining into two facilities as per the presentation:

Refined strategy on back of lessons learnt from South, to implement dedicated copper and a cobalt refining footprint through potential repurposing of existing copper refinery and acquisition of decommissioned cobalt refinery

Jubilee is advancing discussions to gain access to existing copper refining footprint in partnership with current owners
Jubilee is advancing discussion to acquire cobalt refining footprint for the Northern Strategy

From the original RNS (24/08/2021) when the MoU was announced:
“ Under the Agreement it is envisaged that the copper and cobalt tailings material from project Elephant, which is partly owned by the ZCCM, will be upgraded and processed through a dedicated processing and refining facility based on the recapitalisation by Jubilee of existing refining infrastructure located at Mopani (Targeted Refining Area). The Targeted Refining Area will hold the potential to produce up to 17 000 tonnes of copper units per annum in addition to Sable Refinery's 14 000 tonnes per annum capacity. The Targeted Refining Area is currently not utilised by Mopani and does not form part of Mopani's existing operational strategy. The Agreement offers the opportunity to refurbish and bring back into operation this decommissioned Targeted Refining Area offering an expanded copper refining footprint at Mopani and the associated direct investment and employment into the region.”

So it may be that they are only looking to purchase one refinery (cobalt), with the defunct Mopani copper refinery being refurbished for the benefit of both parties… I could be wrong on that though!

We know that majors like Anglo American are only interested in deposits which can be developed into large scale, long life mines. It seems highly likely that out of the many targets we have for potential exploration, some will be uneconomic on that kind of scale but may be economic on a smaller scale. I wonder how that might work within the JV? Is it possible that smaller areas might be sold on or even developed by Arc themselves? It’s something I’ve wondered about before and might be a question for the next Investor Call… which hopefully will be quite soon!

Botswana is a possibility I guess… but typical mineralisation in that area might be difficult to mine. Look at Khoemacau, relatively thin mineralisation layers in steeply dipping planes. My uneducated guess would be that if PL135 proves to have good assays then it might be snapped up by Khoemacau to tie into their nearby targets.

Nick has mentioned the potential for another license in Zambia… that may be the one which Anglo now has an application on or it might be elsewhere? That could be a possibility.

Then there’s Namibia, which has been mentioned more than once.

Snap! :-)

It does raise a good question though, are there provisions in place in the JV to allow ALL of the major targets to be explored before any attempt to take us out? In reality I guess they will blitz the key ares so we should get an idea of the potential within the first season or two.

We get a free carry on the drilling costs… I don’t think they would give us a free carry on the costs of getting a mine into development! We will be gone long before then assuming they make a major discovery… hopefully following a Voisey Bay style bun fight!

https://www.mining.com/web/erg-to-spend-1-8-billion-doubling-african-copper-cobalt-output/

This is the reprocessing company across the border from Jubilee in the DRC. Interesting read.

If you feel the need to reply to these idiots fair enough but at least report their posts as well, eventually they will get banned. Nobody wants to read pages of pointless arguing.

This was from the WH Ireland research note from December 2021:

“ Roan will also produce a small amount of copper sulphide concentrate to be processed initially at Mufulira smelter by Mopani. However, Jubilee also has a small pilot plant to learn how to leach the sulphide concentrates. If this pilot plant is successful, it could revolutionise Jubilee’s plans in Zambia.”

We must be due another research note soon!

Personally I’m looking forward to the Botswana assays, particularly from license PL135/2017. I’ve looked at the latest satellite images for both license areas and from what I can see, there seems to have been more activity at that license. If you’re not already aware, PL135/2017 is surrounded on both sides by Khoemacau license PL002/2006. If you want to have a look the new Cadastre portal is online: https://portal.miningcadastre.gov.bw/page/mappublic
Just put the license number or ‘Alvis’ in the search tab to find it.

Khoemacau have two priority targets in PL002/2006, both of which border our license: ‘Banana Peel’, which is right next to our drilling area, and ‘Zone 9’ which is on the eastern boarder. They have already drilled along our boarder and the assays are promising. You can see the assay results on the last slide in this blog:
https://seisnav.blogspot.com/2022/07/arc-minerals-in-kalahari-copperbelt.html

If we have assays with similar results I can easily see them wanting to join up both sides of that license area…

This was from the Mining Indaba yesterday:
https://www.state.gov/minerals-security-partnership-governments-engage-with-african-countries-and-issue-a-statement-on-principles-for-environmental-social-and-governance-standards/

Jubilee could be a poster child for this! :-)