Despite improved performance at its South African operations, Leon Coetzer, the CEO of Jubilee Metals, says the company is experiencing challenges - mainly centred around electricity supply deficits - with its operations in Zambia.
Jubilee Metals mines copper in Zambia as well as PGMs and chrome in South Africa. Coetzer said on Monday that the challenges to do with power supply in Zambia are beyond the company’s control.
“Over the past quarter, we have experienced significant challenges in our Zambian operations brought on by a combination of extraordinary circumstances outside of our direct control. We have addressed the power supply challenge by entering into an additional power supply agreement that sources power across a broader generation network to avoid localised exposure to network instabilities and a single power generation plant,” said Coetzer.
The company was now hoping that the new power supply contract will help it to address the current power supply limitations that were affecting its Roan copper project’s ability to operate. Nonetheless, the electricity supply interruptions over the quarter to December had come soon after the recent commissioning of the upgraded Roan facility that the company had earmarked to significantly raise its copper production.
Jubilee is now planning to return to the processing rate previously achieved at Roan once power delivery under the new power supply agreement commences.
In South Africa, Coetzer said, Jubilee was continuing “to deliver an exceptional performance, and we are well on track to achieve and exceed our chrome guidance of 1.65 million tons of chrome concentrate” for FY2025.
This follows the attainment of design capacity by the two production modules at Thuse in December, yielding record quarterly production.
“Our Chrome and PGM business have proactively reacted to the sharp decline in the chrome market prices by successfully increasing both operational efficiencies and overall throughput,” said Coetzer.
In the first half period to December 2024, Jubilee’s chrome operations in SA raised output to 974 659 tons on the back of improved efficiencies while PGM production at 18 435 ounces benefited from better quality feed.
The company said it was now on track to achieve and exceed its chrome concentrate production guidance of 1.65 million tons, and the PGM production guidance of 36 000 ounces.
In Zambia, Jubilee’s copper units produced reached 1 454 tons compared to the prior year contrasting period’s output of 1 683 tons although this was below the revised first half-year production target of 1 800 tons. The missed target reflected “the impact” of power constraints in Zambia due to depleted water levels at Kariba.
Copper run-of-mine (ROM) and in process stock for Jubilee also increased sharply, reaching 1.21 million tons containing an estimated 8 466 tons of copper units now earmarked for future processing.
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