Jubilee to construct a processing facility for 25 000 tpa of copper
The roll-out of Jubilee’s copper and cobalt strategy offers the potential of significant continued earnings growth in addition to the achievements of its PGM and chrome operations. The Company’s Kabwe Project combined with its multi-metal Sable Refinery establishes Jubilee’s fully integrated multi-metal recovery and refining operational footprint in Zambia.
The Sable Refinery, which acts as a central processing facility for third-party material in the region, gives access to a current resource comprising of an estimated 6.4 million tonnes of surface waste assets containing zinc, lead and vanadium pentoxide in addition to the approximately 300 million tonnes of copper and cobalt tailings secured in 2020.
As previously announced, during 2020, Jubilee entered into joint venture agreements to secure rights to process over 300 million tonnes of copper and cobalt containing tailings in Zambia. The copper and cobalt tailings are located in three central locations named Project Roan, Project Lechwe and Project Elephant.
Jubilee aims to construct a processing facility at each of the three locations. The scope of the processing facilities will be determined by the refining capacity at its Sable Refinery, currently standing at 14 000 tonnes per annum. Jubilee has a set target to expand its access to refining capacity, to achieve a targeted 25 000 tonnes of copper units per annum.
During H1 2021, the first of the processing facilities entered its construction phase at Project Roan, which targets an annual production rate of 10 000 tonnes of equivalent copper units.
The Project Roan copper concentrator neared completion during the reporting period with early commissioning activities commencing. The completion of construction has commenced well post the period, with the final integration of the copper oxide and copper sulphide circuit targeted for completion during March 2022 to complete the ramp-up of the fully integrated circuit during the current period.
PROJECT LECHWE UPDATE – ZAMBIA
During the period, the completion of the design work for the Company’s second copper processing facility, Project Lechwe, whereby Jubilee has secured the rights to approximately 150 million tonnes of copper containing surface tailings, further progressed with final pilot runs under way to confirm the design work. Project Lechwe targets to reach the production of 7 500 copper units per annum in addition to Project Roan by Q2 of CY2023.
