Jubilee Metals Group plc (LON:JLP) Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss key drivers of growth, the importance of securing private power, and what we can expect from the group over the coming months.
Q1: Leon, with copper production starting to show its upward momentum now, what are the key drivers of this growth?
A1: Yes, at the copper side in Zambia, we certainly are seeing the results of a big effort that’s gone into bringing the copper production into production, of course, and then increasing it. We have three key drivers in Zambia as we drive to expand that copper production up to that target, we’ve told the market of 25,000 tonnes of copper.
It comes from three sources:
- We’ve got our previously processed or historically processed material, which is a combination of tailings and waste products that we process.
- We’ve got our previously mined products, which are material that’s been mined and dumped prior to being processed
- We have the exciting area that’s developing really rapidly and this is the area where we are mining material that are very close to surface through an open-pit access.
This area of which Project Munkoyo was the first we announced, we announced Project G, and we are in negotiations and discussions to secure many more of these opportunities.
So, the resource availability, coupled to the fact that we have solved the processing solution to extract this copper, that’s the key driver that’s now coming through in our results. And putting pressure at the right place, and that is our processing capacity, as we now look to expand that footprint to drive our copper output in Zambia.
Q2: Why is the new Private Power Purchase Agreement such an important step towards achieving your growth?
A2: Zambia has taught us a couple of dear lessons, one being infrastructure and availability of power.
When we started out in Zambia and we constructed the first phase of our own project, we were hit with several power outages and a lack of available power. At the moment, Zambia is facing a severe drought. The country of Zambia generates most of its power through hydropower and therefore is coupled to the amount of water availability and to ensure that we have a strategy where we are expanding our operational footprint, it soon became very clear that we cannot pursue such a strategy in the absence of secured power.
It is why we pursued so aggressively to secure private power to supplement the power being supplied via the government’s ZESCO utility. So, we don’t only serve our current operational need, but we also serve our expected expansion over the coming year as we step up our processing capacity, a vital key ingredient to success in Zambia.
Q3: What could we expect from Jubilee Metals over the coming months?
A3: Well, hopefully what we will deliver to our shareholders is this constant upward momentum in our production output. We’ve got the Munkoyo project coming full on stream, we’ve got Project G, a mining project, coming full on stream, we’ve announced Roan being commissioned and now being ramped up.
As these three projects expand and deliver the results, we expect a significant step up in copper output. I look forward to that potential of upward revising our estimates for the year as these three projects coming on full stream now.
