Jubilee Metals Announces A New Partnership Agreement For Its PGM And Chrome Operations In South Africa
Jubilee Metals Announces A New Partnership Agreement For Its PGM And Chrome Operations In South Africa. Jubilee Metals Group PLC, a leader in diversified metals processing, with operations in Africa, is pleased to announce a new partnership agreement for its PGM and chrome operations in South Africa.
Leon Coetzer, CEO of Jubilee Metals said, “Jubilee’s proven processing excellence continues to attract partnerships with large mining companies seeking best-in-class operational processing groups. “This new partnership agreement presents a more integrated long-term relationship with an existing chrome producer that will offer a stronger integration of the processing solution with the source of the material ensuring a long-term stable production profile. Under this new template agreement, Jubilee is offered a much greater exposure to the earnings derived from the sale of chrome concentrate.
Coetzer continued to say, “At current market prices, the Agreement offers the potential for Jubilee to increase its current chrome earnings margins per tonne of chrome concentrate produced by nearly five-fold compared with the existing chrome toll agreements which achieves only 4% at today’s prices. We aim to expand our South African operational footprint by 65% over the next 24 months to reach nearly 2 million tonnes of chrome concentrate annually as we continuously strive to enhance our earnings. At our Zambian copper operations, current expansion continues to progress and remains in line with guidance. I look forward to providing further detail on the implementation of the Zambian copper strategy in due course as the results from the testing and design work are finalised.”
The Jubilee chrome operations in South Africa play a key role in driving the performance and growth of the PGM operations. Chrome is recovered first from the chrome and PGM-bearing ore before being processed further to recover the PGMs at the Inyoni facility. The high efficiencies achieved by Jubilee’s chrome operations not only produce better quality and more chrome product, that attracts chrome producers to Jubilee’s operations, but also provides a cleaner PGM-rich feed that is more amenable to the PGM recovery process. To date, Jubilee has contracted its chrome operational capacity predominantly on a fixed chrome margin contract by tolling various chrome producers’ materials while retaining the majority of the earnings from the PGMs recovered.
As Jubilee looks to expand its chrome and PGM production by entering into new long-term partnership agreements, Jubilee intends to position itself as a stronger participant in the revenues from the sale of the produced chrome concentrates. This offers Jubilee greater exposure to the chrome market fundamentals while retaining the protection of the increased processing efficiencies and the revenues of the PGMs recovered from the tailings of the chrome facilities. At current market prices the new contract offers the potential to increase Jubilee’s margin per tonne of chrome concentrate produced by approximately five-fold.
