Jubilee Metals Holdings PLC (LON:JLP) Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the completion of the Sable Zinc Refinery in Kabwe & what investors can expect in the coming months.
Q1: Some good news out with regards to the Sable Zinc Refinery, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Of course, for Jubilee Metals, it’s a very big moment, we’ve been pursuing this transaction for quite a while and it’s wonderful to have reached where we have now fully completed the transaction and have taken ownership of the refinery.
This is a very important step as this now allows us legally to start implementing our solution, our process upgrades and to capitalise that refinery, as I’ve said it before, what we call a fully integrated. This means that we own both the feed material as well as delivering what we call a multi-metal refinery, this refinery will be producing copper, zinc, vanadium and lead as we implement our process solutions.
So, a very exciting moment for the company.
Q2: With all that in mind, what’s next for the company, what can investors expect to see over the coming months?
A2: Sometimes we don’t quite get across to the market just how much we are transforming as we speak, of course our results show it with constant dramatic increases in earnings and revenue.
So, in the next 6 months, we have our second large PGM project that’s gone operational so we look forward to bringing those earnings and revenues into our Group earnings.
The immediate target is to bring the copper refinery line back into operation at this refinery and start producing copper before year-end whilst the engineers implement our zinc and vanadium refining streams which we’ll bring into operation early next year, followed by the lead.
So, the strategy is quite clear, we secure third party copper material to feed the refinery so that we deliver earnings whilst we build our vanadium and zinc refining line which will be feeding from the Kabwe material, 6.5 million tonnes of it lying on surface, and feed that into the refinery.
So, a very busy time for the company as our operational front expands, we are now not only across South Africa but of course, we have a very large presence now in Zambia. The refinery, of course, has been operational, it continues to produce acid, sulphuric acid, which we’ll supply to the industry so very exciting and busy time for Jubilee Metals Holdings.