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And another 687,919,906 bought! That's the majority of the placing done... looks like I'll be buying on Monday!

Well there's 400,000,000 of the placing dealt with. I'm sure they have a reason to invest £120,000 in Tertiary, despite what all the vultures circling around here think!

I should add that if you include 900 tonnes / quarter of copper production with a margin of US$3,000 / tonne, the overall gross profit would be ~US$65m. Even after deducting costs you could still have an operation that funds future growth in Zambia.

There's clearly a case for delaying any possible sale to see what happens... prices might collapse again or they might hold, we don't know.

Well the estimated PGM basket hit US$1,700 / ounce for the first time this morning. Platinum still making gains but it's interesting that some of the other metals like ruthenium and iridium are also starting to increase slowly, it's not just speculation over platinum.

Chrome has weakened a bit from recent highs but remains at US$285-290 / tonne this week.

Plugging the numbers into my sheet gives a potential annual gross profit of US$54m for chrome / PGM's at current prices. Obviously highly speculative but if these prices persist I think the chances of the sale being voted through are slim at best!

You seem delighted at the prospect HD... I wonder why?!

Is Tjate really that deep? I've never looked into it because that was before I invested but I found this:

"The geology looks good - Tjate is downdip of existing productive mines, Marula and Twickenham. It also looks to have a high contained value per tonne of ore, second only to Northam, and well ahead of other mines such as Amplats and Eastplats [4] , while being a comparatively shallow resource it should have lower costs per tonne than most [5] - it's 600 to 1,200 metres in depth compared to as much as 2,000 metres at Northam and Impala deeps, and against an average 1,800 metres at the majors' new shafts."

It also contains copper and nickel which will only make it more attractive as time goes on. Shallow PGM mines are becoming worked out and eventually they will need to go deeper

I think the site should introduce a daily limit on the number of posts that a user can make on a board... it might encourage people to think a bit before they type!

Jubilee started out processing chrome at a fixed margin in order to benefit from the 'free' PGM rich tailing that came out of the process. The margin on chrome is very low ~US$4 / tonne, hardly worth the effort if it wasn't for the PGM's that they got to keep. When PGM prices started to collapse they were smart enough to see that in order to keep the business profitable they needed to start buying RoM directly and processing that. The pro is that the margin is higher (although still not that high), the con is that they then have to fund very large payments to buy the RoM, based on the chrome price at the time, then sell is 2 months or so later at whatever the current price of chrome is.... great when the price of chrome is rising but not so great when it's falling. It's high risk for small margin.

If PGM's recover then great we can switch focus back to that and make a decent margin but processing low margin chrome in the long term is never going to allow the company to grow.

They said they are looking at external funding for the LWP and possibly for the modules at Munkoyo and Grovenor so that shouldn't really be a factor but to be honest there are so many mixed messages I'm not sure what the plan is. They also talked about a tie up with another company for a processing plant at Grovenor.

Roan is supposed to be in production now, the testing is done.

It is possible to hit the fabled 25,000 tonnes in two years but only if they hit their own targets and frankly we haven't seen a single target hit in Zambia as yet so I wouldn't bet on it being guaranteed in 2 years time. If they get a contract signed to progress the Large Waste Project (they really need to give that a snappier name!) and can start turning out modules this calendar year then it's certainly achievable. They said that the manufacturer could produce more than one at a time and they would take about 6 months to construct.

Sixoclockticket,

You are looking at the overall CAPEX numbers not the SA numbers, for chrome / PGM it was US$28m in FY23 and US$22.3m in FY24. In H1FY25 it was US$2.4m.

Cobalt is still an option at the right price but a glut of production from Indonesia has collapsed prices to the point it was uneconomic for Jubilee.

I almost don't need to check what the SP is doing, I just have to look at the timing of Edzi's posts!

I did try and work it out once Dru but I don't remember the exact figure now, I think it was something like 8-10p but I could be wrong.

My estimate is just under US$1,700 / PGM ounce at the moment, and thats a recent high, despite rhodium dropping back a bit.

I plugged today's numbers into my sheet just out of interest. Based on 44,000 ounces production from Jubilee plus 5,000 ounces from the JV I get just under US$30m gross profit if these prices were maintained throughout the year. That's using last years costs so might be a bit of an over estimate on that.

There are certainly some reports suggesting platinum buying has increased due to jewellers switching away from gold due to the high price but I think there's also something else going on because it's not just platinum thats getting a boost, palladium is up, rhodium is up and also ruthenium has been quietly creeping up to near it's highest since the pandemic. Maybe China is looking to stockpile PGM's expecting increased demand in the future? They are really scaling up the green hydrogen industry when it seems to be stalling everywhere else and PGM's play a big part in that, especially platinum and ruthenium.

If you are seeing a lot of adds on the page that can really cause problems when typing. I installed an add blocker to my browser and hey presto, no adds and a pretty problem free browsing and typing experience.

Yes I'd assumed Ricus was gone a few weeks ago when I noticed his Linkedin updated. I wasn't going to say anything but as it's out there now....

I saw from his new wife that the family was heading to Australia to live on their farm out there, leaving behind their vineyard in Stellenbosch (nice work if you can get it!). My suspicion is that it's something to do with the plan to bring in a mining partner at Munkoyo, maybe pushing Makor Resources out of the picture. I don't know that for sure, it's just a guess. Maybe Jubilee wasn't happy with the way the mine was progressing? Who knows. Although I thought Ricus seemed a good guy I was never entirely happy with that situation of him working for Jubilee whilst also heading Makor Resources, I didn't really understand the setup there.

I think they increased ownership of Grovenor to 65% (?) from memory. It certainly makes us mine owners 😁

Stating an opinion is fine but dressing it up as fact isn't really helpful as far as I can see.

Yes it's certainly possible that Slater was involved in pushing for the sale of the SA assets to advance Zambia but we don't know that for sure.

It's equally possible that the company who made the offer saw the potential for the business at a time when PGM's were just starting to creep upwards. I guess the offer would have been made before PGM's really took off. They are in a much better position than us because as Leon said, they own the mines... something Leon is pushing ahead with in Zambia to make sure we don't make the same mistake twice.

There's an inherent weakness in the chrome business that I don't think any of us really appreciated until the H1 numbers came out, the potential for margins to be squeezed in the event of a fall in chrome prices. The business looks profitable right now but that could quickly evaporate if chrome falls. I think that played a part in them accepting the offer, which after consideration I thought was a fair one... before PGM prices started to recover!

Yes, I'm sure we all wish that the offer had come in six months down the line but hopefully whatever information they put out will be enough to add some meat to the bones.

You're making a lot of assumptions there Nelson, why do you think Leon is trying to save face? Do you know that for a fact or are you wildly speculating?