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To be fair, a total power grid collapse is not something you can really plan for, that's an extremely unusual event. As long as there is no drought in the next year it shouldn't be a problem in the future. Zambia are rolling out diversification measures to move away from over reliance on hydro power. Solar plants are popping up around the country and I believe they plan to expand the coal fired power station.

The annual report is out today, for anyone wanting a bit of bedtime reading 😁

https://matthey.com/documents/161599/509428/PGM_Market_Report_25.pdf/5f4e4078-8e9a-3c96-d334-9d14da9de094?t=1747159713413

No great surprises but it gives background on whats affecting supply and demand. One interesting part regarding rhodium:

"Although rhodium retreated during early April, it remained above the $5,000 level. It appears that much of the excess liquidity of the past two years has been absorbed; this could herald a return to more volatile trading conditions, after a period of price stability between late 2023 and early 2025."

Let's hope so! I see that rhodium is climbing again this week after a bit of a decline.

It didn't say they would be issuing the results in two weeks, just that they expected to complete the trials in the next two weeks. I would hope they will have the information they need shortly after that. Add a few days for the inevitable delays.

The Munkoyo ramp up target is meaningless because we have never been told what the timeline is! Are they on track to reach it next week or next year... who knows?

I guess Peggy will have to change his username now the Courts have confirmed that the definition of a woman is a female at birth, not some anonymous prick on the internet 😉

Iluvise68, do you think all of the buying is due to insider trading? Yes the price is up but isn't that more likely to be because the constant selling pressure the SP has been experiencing for much of the last 12 months has apparently now finished? The price has been driven down to unrealistic lows and is now recovering to somewhere closer to where it should be. We know news is due shortly on Zambia, thats no secret, although if it took them 6 weeks to test 4 types of feed material it might be optimistic to expect them to test the other 2 in 2 weeks, like Leon said. Anyway we shall see soon enough!

I'm not expecting the copper forecast for the rest of this year to shoot the lights out, especially with the stopping and starting to fine tune the processing at Roan for each type of material tested. What I want to see are hard numbers showing what Roan is capable of producing given an uninterrupted production run. That's what Leon promised and lets hope thats what he delivers, I think we are all a bit tired of hearing about capacity!

Regarding Chingola, it's a bit early to be thinking about how they are going to drill it, let's see what the soil sampling shows up first! They should have been on the ground for about a month now so hopefully making good progress on that. If KoBold were looking to acquire the license before Arc did then significant soil anomalies might get them on the hook for a JV, who knows.

Anglo, like any major, are methodical in their approach to exploration. The first step was to get a broad overview of the basin geology which they have done, or at least started to do. They are on the ground now, possibly doing follow up geophysics based on the initial drilling results which will feed into the upcoming drill program. What I want to see is where they intend to focus their activity this season, hopefully we will get an investor call soon, setting all of that out... maybe before the Proactive event on Wednesday evening?

It looks like the seller might finally be out... fingers crossed!

Just a little reminder that metals prices and the share price are very disconnected at the moment... not that we didn't know that already but a picture paints a thousand words as the saying goes!

https://tinyurl.com/52uwpu75

I found this in a report on the chrome market today:

"In terms of raw materials, the chrome ore market operated smoothly during the day. On May 8, 2025, the spot offer for 40-42% South African powder at Tianjin Port was 62-63 yuan/mtu, with futures prices at 290-300 US dollars/mt. Currently, chrome ore prices are fluctuating at highs. Although actual transactions of 300 US dollars/mt futures supported market confidence in the chrome ore market, ferrochrome producers had low acceptance of high-priced raw materials. Moreover, ferrochrome producers had relatively sufficient raw material stockpiles in the early stage, leading to recent purchases mainly for just-in-time spot orders, with sluggish inquiries and transactions. Considering the further increase in ferrochrome planned production and the positive demand outlook driving chrome ore prices to remain high and stable, it is expected that the chrome ore market will operate smoothly in the short term."

Cobalt intermediate products have continued to slowly increase in price over the period since the DRC imposed the temporary export ban. It will be interesting to see what happens when the ban expires, will they impose an export quota to keep prices elevated? If they don't the price will crash lower as all the stockpiles are shipped to China so I think it's likely they will keep some kind of quota. Pity Jubilee decided not to restart production.

It's just a rehash of the last RNS, nothing to get excited about.

Jonah, from memory, the last we heard in an RNS was quite positive in that they were planning a semi-commercial pilot plant at the Luanshya tailings dumps. That was more than 18 months ago though. It might be that they are eventually planning to do something like the leaching planned for Munkoyo, in partnership with Draslovka. Anyway I think that has slipped way down the priority list, it doesn’t even get a mention in RNS’s these days. As Northern said, they are clearly trying to maximise production at Roan and Sable first before implementing other projects.

One possibility is that they build refining capacity at Roan once Roan’s output can no longer be taken up by Sable. The Luanshya tailings are not all that far from Roan so concentrate from there could then potentially be refined to cathode at Roan. That’s just speculation, although Leon has said a refinery at Roan is one option they are looking at.

Leon made it clear in the investor call that Roan is now only processing the higher grade material, there is nothing else being put through the plant, so, 45,000 tpm @ 1.6% cu gives a maximum possible production of 8,640 tonnes / year from Roan, squeezing every last drop of copper from the rock. Obviously thats unrealistic, the question is what percentage is recoverable?

The DMS circuit, if it performs to spec, is expected to recover about 55% of contained copper so 8640 x 0.55 = 4,752 tonnes / year. The tailings from that process presumably then go to the other circuit which can recover an oxide and a sulphide concentrate. There is also the possibility of heap leaching as well, which hasn't been mentioned but was supposed to be tested at Roan. A 70% overall recovery would be 8640 x 0.7 = 6,048 tonnes / year. If they achieve that or better I would be reasonably happy.

The Munkoyo feed to Sable is somewhere between 5,000 - 8,000 tpm @ > 2% which is somewhere between 1,200 -1,900 tonnes / year or better (depending on grade). The rate is eventually expected to increase to 15,000 tpm.

Grovenor is still in the drilling stage from what Leon said, so not currently shipping anything to Sable but should get going soon. Leon said we should expect a similar timeline as Munkoyo, roughly 6 months from acquisition to starting to ship material... it's been more than 6 months already.

Between Roan and Munkoyo, that should be at or close to Sable's current cathode capacity, Grovenor should be ramping up in time for the second cathode plating tank-house to come into operation later in the year.

Getting the leaching plants up and running at Munkoyo will be another step forward but that will likely take several months to build and get operational.

The list was updated today, no changes to speak of, Slater and Canaccord unchanged from last time. Whoever is selling must be one of the smaller holders which is good news.

Nelson, I used to work in oil and gas exploration and I've been burned more times investing in those type of companies than anything else! I swore never again to invest in that sector. At least with Jubilee the material is already at or close to surface, you're not gambling on finding it.

This is now the first anniversary of Jupiter fund starting to sell. Since then we have never been without an institutional seller! Is it any wonder the SP has been under pressure. I honestly don't understand their logic in holding all that time and then selling when SA is starting to generate significant returns and the CAPEX spend is largely done and Zambia is finally coming together. Oh well, at least when it does finally bounce it should bounce hard.

My ballpark estimate for this year is roughly US$40m gross profit from PGM's and chrome combined.

I think they are being conservative with the guidance (a good thing!) because even if they target higher grade chrome at the expense of PGM's this quarter we should still exceed PGM guidance and thats without anything from the JV. I estimate we could see another 1000 ounces produced from that this year (500 attributable to Jubilee).

Bluebelly even if you assume 2 million tonnes produced at a margin of US$20 / tonne that's still only US$40m gross profit from chrome. For this year is going to be much less than that.

That first sentence is just word salad Bonker. It's about supply and demand. In PGM's demand has been weak but supply has continued the same. Now they are starting to cut supply we might see some improvement in the PGM basket and when PGM prices move up, they tend to move up fast. Let's hope so anyway.

I did notice this yesterday:

https://www.miningweekly.com/article/mining-production-sales-fall-in-february-2025-04-15

"Mining production decreased by 9.6% year-on-year in February, Statistics South Africa reports. The largest negative contributors were platinum group metals (PGMs) (-23.9% and contributing -5.8 percentage points)..."

"Commenting on the figures, industry body Minerals Council South Africa says that PGMs production is being aligned to an uncertain demand environment that has kept prices relatively depressed. It adds that to a mixed degree, rand prices of platinum, palladium and rhodium have increased so far in this year, despite the concern about vehicle demand in the US amid likely tariff-induced vehicle price increase."

Thats a big drop in year on year monthly production.

Anyone else think it was unusual to call the new Zambian subsidiary company Foreland Minerals when the Chingola Project is nowhere near the Western Forelands? I wonder if they were looking at another license in the that area first but eventually went back to Chingola when that became available again.

A pretty solid set of numbers from SA, chrome a bit lower than previous quarter but PGMs higher, I guess due to the variability in the feed grade. Not a bad time to have increased PGMs with the basket higher and chrome lower, or maybe they planned it that way. With chrome price up again this quarter maybe we will see stronger chrome production.

The JV is interesting, I wonder what the production costs are for the partner? It could be lower due to economy of scale.