Jubilee on course at tailings plant for early cash flows and higher chrome price

JUBILEE Platinum is confident it can build the chrome-extraction part of its tailings treatment plant in time to secure a higher price for the chrome concentrate it will produce.

Jubilee has sold its Middelburg smelting and electricitygeneration facility for R110m, ringfencing the money to develop two surface tailings treatment operations simultaneously.

However, the AltX- and AIM traded company has been given a financial incentive to expedite the front end of its treatment plant at ASA Metals’ Dilokong Chrome Mine in Limpopo, 125km south of Polokwane.

If Jubilee completes the chrome-beneficiation circuit by the end of January, ASA will pay it up to 25% more for every tonne of delivered chrome concentrate.

Jubilee said yesterday it “projects it will be able to commission the chrome-beneficiation circuit of the new processing plant five months earlier than anticipated, thereby resulting in earlier-than-planned cash flows”.

The increased revenue would enhance the profitability of the project and underpin the economics of its two tailings-treatment projects to extract platinum group metals (PGMs) and chrome, including the plant Jubilee would build at Hernic in North West, it said. The Hernic project “will be the largest PGM beneficiation plant of chrome tailings reclaimed from a surface chrome tailings dam in SA”.

Jubilee is nearing the conclusion of a full-funding agreement with a large international bank to pay for the projects.

“The acquisition of the surface platinum projects has placed Jubilee in a strong position, producing platinum from low-cost operations, where mining risk is completely absent. The overall operating costs allow Jubilee to remain profitable at well below current platinum prices,” said Jubilee chairman Colin Bird.