Jubilee nearly doubles its rights to copper tailings in Zambia
Jubilee Metals Group has announced that it has successfully concluded further copper tailings transactions to secure the rights to an additional approximately 115 million 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 already approximately 155 million tonnes secured, as announced previously, significantly contributing to future sustained earnings.
Jubilee has secured the exclusive processing rights to the material through its subsidiary Braemore Platinum Limited by entering into tailings supply and process development agreements with a number of privately held entities who 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 who 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 secure Braemore the exclusive right to process the approximately 115 million tonnes of copper containing tailings through the implementation of a copper and cobalt processing facility.
In addition, 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.
This affords Jubilee the opportunity to interpret these results and incorporate its in-house expertise and IP to significantly accelerate the Project development cycle.
Jubilee’s secured pipeline of copper projects in Zambia to date places the Company on track to deliver its stated objective to expand its copper producing capacity to in excess of the equivalent of 25 000 tonnes of copper units per annum.
Leon Coetzer, CEO of Jubilee, commented: “These Agreements, together with the previous rights to material already secured, have resulted in Jubilee having access to an extensive copper and cobalt containing resource, which importantly is at surface and able to generate long term quality earnings.
The implementation of our Zambian copper strategy has been carefully designed and aggressively pursued by the Jubilee team in a very short amount of time. It targets to rapidly replicate at a much larger scale our success achieved in the re-processing of PGM and chrome tails.
“We have, within 14 months of establishing our presence in Zambia, approximately 270 million tonnes of copper tailings and commissioned a fully operational copper refinery with the ability to expand the refinery into multi metal products.
“The formation of the development partnership with the Tailings Partners stems from the recognition of Jubilee as the optimal partner to bring to fruition these copper and cobalt tailings. In addition, the partnership affords the Jubilee team the opportunity to apply their know-how to the body of information developed from the extensive drilling campaigns and analytical test programmes undertaken over several years.
“These Agreements put us on track to play a commanding role in the processing of surface tailings in Zambia by applying our proven technical know-how and IP. As I have stated before, Zambia contains vast quantities of copper tailings requiring Jubilee’s skills to unlock the opportunities and value.
We have been working alongside leading institutions to review these opportunities and are now perfectly poised to play a commanding role in this area. We have demonstrated our ability to combine the rehabilitation of these historical tailings with the commercial extraction of the contained metals, thereby turning liabilities into commercial ventures.”
