Jubilee Metals Group has secured the rights to an additional about 115m tonnes of copper- and cobalt-containing surface tailings in Zambia. These transactions are in line with its stated strategy to expand operations in the country and are in addition to the about 155m tonnes of tailings that have already been secured.
According to media reports, the dual-listed Jubilee has secured the exclusive processing rights to the material through its subsidiary Braemore Platinum, by entering into tailings supply and process development agreements with some privately held entities that collectively hold both the mining rights to the tailings and the property title on which the tailings are located.
The agreements include both the formation of a development partnership with a well-established Zambian private entity that has invested in securing various tailings assets, as well as securing the rights to the processing of the tailings from the resource owners.
The agreements give Braemore the exclusive right to process the about 115-million tonnes of tailings through the implementation of a copper and cobalt processing facility. Moreover, the project benefits from detailed resource analyses and vast historical process test programmes performed by the tailings partners through the appointment of various independent well-established consulting firms, Jubilee points out.
It notes that this allows it to interpret these results and incorporate its in-house expertise and intellectual property to significantly accelerate the project development cycle. Jubilee’s secured pipeline of copper projects in Zambia places the company on track to deliver its stated objective of expanding its copper-producing capacity to over the equivalent of 25 000 t/y of copper units.
The combined magnitude of the total secured copper tailings resources and related projects, together with Jubilee’s Sable Refinery, offers the potential to deliver long-term sustained quality earnings making a significant contribution to Jubilee’s existing earnings from its platinum group metal (PGM) and chrome operations in South Africa, the company acclaims.
The Sable Refinery is operationally ready and able to significantly enhance its capacity alongside the expected production build-up, without incurring any significant new capital expenditure, the company notes.
