eBusiness Weekly
Lisa Steyn
An R800 million investment programme has expanded the footprint of metals processing company Jubilee Metals beyond South Africa to deliver significant growth. And the company is hungry for more as it looks to Northern Zambia.
In a market update on Monday, Jubilee said it had achieved milestones in its Southern Copper Refining Strategy which aims to produce up to 12 000 tonnes of copper units per annum including a cobalt by-product from certain cobalt-containing feed streams.
Commissioning activities for Project Roan – a processing plant which feeds the operational Sable Refinery – are now nearing conclusion and the plant is expected to reach design capacities during July this year.
Adding to copper refining capacity at its Sable refinery, Jubilee said the construction of a cobalt refining circuit is underway and expected to commence commissioning next month.
Designed to produce up to 1 200 tonnes of cobalt per year, it has the potential to bring in significant revenues, the company said.
“With the completion of the construction of Project Roan we now look to accelerate our investment programme into the Northern Refining Strategy targeting the Luanshya, Kitwe and Mufulira area,” Jubilee CEO Leon Coetzer said in a statement.
In South Africa, the company’s new and expanded Inyoni operations – a chrome and platinum group metals (PGM) facility – is already exceeding targets and Jubilee on course to achieve its PGM ounce production target of 44 000 ounces and 1.2 million tonnes of chrome concentrate per annum.
As Inyoni continues to ramp up production, it delivered just over 8 000 PGM ounces in the first three months of the year, an increase of 75% when compared with Inyoni’s average production rate of the previous two quarters
“The Jubilee team was bold in its plans to expand and optimise the South African and Zambian operations, however a confident, but prudent approach to the deployment of our £39.5 million (about R786 million) investment programme has already resulted in the delivery of significant results for the group,” said Coetzer. “Rolling out our business case across multiple countries, operations and commodities has enabled us to de-risk, capture economies of scale, and also provided exposure to numerous value points throughout the recovery and metal processing chain.”
