Jubilee Metals Group PLC (LON:JLP) Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the reinstated Kabwe mining licence
Q1: We saw this morning that you’ve had your mining licence in Zambia restored, what are the immediate next steps?
A1: Yes, thank you, it is very welcome news received from the Zambian Ministry. The Kabwe mining licence was suspended in February which we’ve always believed was for the wrong reasons but I’m very happy it’s been reinstated.
Basically, what it means therefore is the project test work, project design work, that we had been doing as a team with the BMR team can now be implemented. So, during this time that the licence was suspended we continued the development of the project, so we’ve continued the test work, the design work, mobilised the project execution team in the hope and in the trust that in fact the licence will be reinstated.
So, the project’s immediate next steps is the team is being sent across to Zambia to now go into full execution mode to construct the processing plant for the treatment of that tailings material, or that surface material. As we said previously, we targeted both lead and zinc plus the vanadium component in those tailings.
Q2: How ready are we to execute the project?
A2: We’re fortunate in a way that we’ve been able to leverage the work that was performed by the BMR Group so that we could add to that work a lot of the pre-development and test work and conceptual flow sheet development was performed by BMR. We were therefore in a very fortunate position to be able to take on that work and basically review and optimise the process designs which allowed to reach an execution readiness very quickly on the project.
So, we basically had a point where on the back of that news release, or the flow of information received from the Zambian government, we are ready to commence and mobilise the team within this month, we will basically mobilise and commence execution of that project.
Q3: What’s on the cards for Jubilee Metals Group this year then?
A3: We have a very exciting year ahead, very challenging I suppose as well because we’ll be executing in parallel of course beyond the Kabwe project in Zambia, we’ll also be executing our project in South Africa, that’s a chrome and PGM project. It’s also a project that is the processing of material that’s really at surface and that project is scheduled for execution this year.
Of course, then, the third project we are targeting to execute in this year is our Dilokong project which is a platinum recovery project, we’re just waiting there for regulatory approval of our processes to commence the construction of that project as well.
So, we have a busy year with three projects on the cards for execution.
