jubilee platinum marks mine-to-metals, page-4

As a background: sourced from articles on Jubilee Platinum website: http://www.jubileeplatinum.com/

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Plan is to process 800 000 t of Dilokong chrome mine platinum-bearing tailings using the concentrator at Platinum Australia’s Smokey Hills mine

Targeting a tailings processing rate of up to 50 000 t/m.

“This MoU enables Jubilee to accelerate bringing to production its own high-chrome platinum concentrate for minimal capital investment, allowing Jubilee to leverage off its exclusive ConRoast process. The MoU further endorses the company’s strategy to acquire in the short to near term, surface stocks of platinum-bearing waste materials,” CEO Leon Coetzer said.

Jubilee also has recently acquired a small, but profitable power generating company called PowerAlt

“We’ve dropped our power costs to net 52 cents per kilowatt hour, which is cheaper by far than anyone can get from the national grid”, says Colin.

The Jubilee business has three parts to it: its ConRoast processing technology that allows it to liberate platinum group metals from high chrome ores and tailings dumps; a 70%-owned subsidiary power company, PowerAlt; and what is reported to be the world’s largest undeveloped defined block of platinum ore, the Tjate project.

The Tjate project is Down dip of Implats’ Marula, Angloplats’ Twickenham mines on the in eastern limb of Bushveld Complex.

With the cash flow milestone under his belt, Coetzer is strapping himself in for a period of consolidation. Though he believes surface assets are too valuable for Jubilee to overlook if opportunities are presented, the company will be focusing its energies on bringing Dilokong into production and delivering on its existing energy and treatment contracts.

“There will be a period now of consolidation, bedding down our earnings, and allowing our position as a company with positive earnings and a growing cash balance to provide a base from which we will look at future acquisitions,” he said.

Of course in the background lies Tjate – a sleeping giant. Once upon a time Jubilee would have been standing on top of a hill trying to shout over the other platinum juniors who had also landed themselves a big fish. It is a sign of how times have changed and how focused the company is that Coetzer barely mentions a project that is expected to deliver a resource in the region of 65Moz.

Coetzer would argue that Jubilee has taken significant strides toward limiting its risk profile and therefore deserves to be treated differently by both banks and markets when it comes time to chase the $US700 million it is estimated to cost to build Tjate.

“We haven’t yet successfully distinguished Jubilee – we haven’t been able to convince the market that we are not just another, normal platinum junior with one large project,” he said. “We are a company with earnings. We are a company with medium term surface assets coming into operation. And we are a company with a long term, world class project.”