Jubilee’s upgraded Zambian copper plant operations roar into life

Edward West and Tawanda Karombo

Jubilee Metals, diversified metals producer with operations in South Africa and Zambia, has started operations at its Roan upgrade project in Zambia, adding processing capacity and flexibility to the already operating Roan milling and flotation sections.

Jubilee is involved in copper in Zambia as well as chrome and platinum group metals (PGM) in South Africa. The upgrade of the Roan project located in Zambia has added more processing capacity and flexibility to the plant’s milling and flotation sections.

Roan's new front-end capacity has been constructed adjacent to the already operating milling and flotation circuits, increasing the overall capacity of Roan to a maximum design of 13 000 tons of copper per annum (tpa).

"The Roan front-end module upgrade project in Zambia has commenced production ramp-up of previously mined material, which has been upgraded at source… It has taken a concerted effort by the team to reach this critical point. I look forward to the team completing an accelerated ramp-up of operations during the coming month,” CEO Leon Coetzer said in a statement.

The Roan front-end upgrade is part of Jubilee's overall operational capacity increase strategy, which includes the Sable refinery upgrade project currently underway, targeting to reach a combined processing capacity of 25 000 ton per annum of copper over the coming 12 months.

“The upgraded Roan, together with our Sable refinery, offers Jubilee tremendous processing flexibility and affords us the opportunity to aggressively pursue copper resources that are unlocked by this capability," said Coetzer.

Jubilee's copper strategy is enabled by the company’s ability to extract value from materials often regarded by the industry as either waste or too complex to extract economically through the traditional methods.

The targeted copper resources are classed into three groups namely: previously processed material (includes tailings, partially processed discarded low-grade materials; previously mined materials; and open-pit mining of near surface copper reef.

The company said there were “vast quantities” of all three categories in Zambia, offering Jubilee the opportunity to further upscale its operations through targeted acquisitions of these resources.

“The success in securing these targeted resources has (allowed us) to transition Sable into a dedicated refiner for the processing of open-pit mining operations such as the recently announced Munkoyo operation, while the upgraded Roan will process predominantly previously mined and processed material,” said Coetzer.

In June Jubilee announced civil and mechanical completion on the upgrade and expansion of Roan and has now installed and commissioned the electrical control system (ECS), allowing for the ramp up of production to commence.

This process began with previously mined material being fed into the Roan plant. The material is upgraded at source before being transported to Roan where a saleable copper concentrate is produced. “The copper concentrate will initially be refined to copper cathode at Sable until such time that Sable’s capacity is fully committed to the Open-pit mined material from Munkoyo and Project G whereafter the Roan concentrate will be traded on the open market,” explained the company.

At completion, an expanded Sable and Roan will operate as independent operations.

“Once Sable is at full capacity supplied by open-pit mining operations, Roan can sell excess concentrate in the open market. The company is reviewing expanding the Roan operation to incorporate downstream refining of its concentrate depending on capital allocation.”

The targeted combined processing capacity of about 25 000tpa of copper, would be achieved by an expanded Sable at 16 000tpa, in addition to Roan's expanded capacity.

Earlier this year, Jubilee said the extension of its chrome tolling agreements to February 2027 had helped it secure a total yearly processing feed capacity of 2.4 million tonnes of chrome.

The company processes chrome in South Africa where it also treats PGMs.

Construction of a second chrome processing module at Thutse was also “on track” for completion this month, the company has previously said. This will boost Jubilee’s capacity to produce 300000 tons of chrome concentrates per year.

“Our chrome business continues to grow with Jubilee’s renowned processing and operational capabilities as the drivers of our success. The continued renewal of our toll processing agreements speaks to the acknowledgment by the industry of these capabilities,” said Koetzer earlier.

The company’s chrome and PGM business in South Africa is centREed on-processing third-party chrome ore at its Windsor and Inyoni operations under agreed fixed margin return per tonne of chrome concentrate produced.

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