Jubilee Metals mines copper in Zambia as well as platinum group metals (PGMs) and chrome in South Africa. Picture: Supplied
Jubilee Metals has received a boost for its operations in Zambia after it secured additional electricity supply for its Roan copper project in the southern African country, giving it a much needed respite to the rolling power outages that had impacted its operations.
Over the quarter to December, Jubilee “experienced significant challenges” with its Zambian operations brought on by “a combination of extraordinary circumstances outside of our direct control” and which centred on poor electricity supply.
The company had sought to address this 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.
Now, Jubilee has announced that “regulatory approval has been granted for its new power supply agreement” in Zambia.
In the half year to December, Jubilee’s copper units in Zambia 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.
Power delivery to its Roan facility had commenced at the beginning of this week, enabling the company to restart the Roan concentrator and ensuring stable power supply going forward.
“The commencement of the additional power supply successfully addresses current power supply limitations that affected Roan's ability to operate historically,” said Jubilee CEO, Leon Coetzer.
“We now turn our attention to preparing the plant for re-start and remain focused on delivering reliable production and operational resilience.”
Jubilee said the additional power supply agreement, signed with a new broad based power provider, secured access to a distributed power base from multiple sources of generation. It said this will help to minimise reliance on a single supply source.
Jubilee Metals mines copper in Zambia as well as platinum group metals (PGMs) and chrome in South Africa.
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 the 2025 financial year.
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 South Africa 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.
BUSINESS REPORT