Copper tailings reclamation in Zambia: Jubilee Metals’ advantage

Dual-listed metals recovery business Jubilee Metals Group (Jubilee) has undergone a significant transition over the last two years – extending its metals production from PGM and chrome material in South Africa to include copper in Zambia.

Owing to the country’s enormous volumes of copper tailings material, the company has taken up a first mover advantage in establishing a new industry sector, one that financially benefits its shareholders, but of equal importance, all local stakeholders as well, CEO LEON COETZER tells LAURA CORNISH.

For anyone that may not be familiar with Jubilee, the company has for the last six years been consistently recovering PGM and chrome material from tailings materials in the North-West Province, experiencing significant growth in that time.

While metals recovery businesses such as Jubilee typically are never large in scale, Jubilee is set to break this mold with exponential growth opportunities being pursued in addition to its already established large operational capacities in South Africa on the back of its established experience base in extracting specific metals economically and sustainably from substantial volumes of processed waste.

It is this skill set that has enabled the company to expand its reach into Zambia – a relatively mature mining jurisdiction that is also home to an abundance of copper waste material that has sat dormant for decades.

“Zambia falls within the southern African region and is close to South Africa and logistically easy to travel to. It has the same time zone as South Africa. It is also known for its copper-rich resources, and consequently, its copper waste material. Considering the combination of these factors, it was an easy decision to embark on and implement a strategy to secure that material and add to our portfolio one of the world’s most in-demand, green metals,” Coetzer starts.

Jubilee officially entered Zambia at the end of 2018 when it completed the acquisition of the Sable zinc refinery in Kabwe from two Glencore subsidiaries.

“It marked the beginning of a well thought out strategy which replicated our business in South Africa to a large extent – secure and expand a central refining footprint, fed by various concentrating nodes that process tailings materials from a variety of large, centralised historical waste sources,” Coetzer outlines.

The result of which will see the company become a larger-scale rehabilitation and metals reclamation entity in the country. The intricate detail of the company’s recovery strategy sees it evaluate prospective material closely – exposing itself either to waste that was created because of inefficient process, but more importantly, waste that is created because a particular mineral or metal or type of association of metal was rejected by the original process.

“Jubilee has become well known for going into areas and challenging the industry norms of what is considered material that is too difficult to process. We call it perceived waste – successfully extracting ‘unrecoverable’ material and this we are already achieving in Zambia,” he says.

Importantly, the company’s business model does not focus on owning all of the tailing’s material, but rather on establishing relationships with the owner of the tailings where it brings its development, processing and operational skills of delivering world class, high tech, bespoke designed recovery plants to the table – and then unlocking that value through a joint venture agreement with the owner, enabling them to participate in an earnings shared type model.

This process is accompanied by incorporating diversity into the business through youth, community, and the various stakeholders such as women structures. This has become an important driver of long-term growth and value from the start.

“Because of this model, we have in a very short space of time been able to contractually secure nearly 300 Mt of tails in various tailings dams across Zambia with the support of government and other key stakeholders,” Coetzer highlights. And while 300 Mt signifies significant metals recovery opportunities, it represents only approximately 10% of the actual quantum of the waste that is available in Zambia.

“We are hard at work demonstrating and educating the industry on the economic viability of recovering metals from this waste, sustainably. And ultimately, its potential to become a full-scale industry.”

Two years of significant progress and achievement

Less than a year after acquiring the moth-balled 14 000 tpa (of copper) Sable multi-metal refinery, and associated Kabwe tailings source, Jubilee has performed exceptionally well – recapitalising and modernising the business while moving the operation into production in September 2019. Jubilee’s strategy was to complete the operational readiness of the refinery in time to receive the copper concentrates produced by the targeted new copper concentrators located at the various tailing’s assets under Jubilee’s management.

This project establishes the company’s fully integrated multi-metal recovery and refining operational footprint in Zambia. The company’s first large-scale copper concentrator, project Roan, has now entered commissioning and is expected to move into full operation by the end of May.

“The Roan concentrator will have the ability to produce an additional 10 000 t of copper units annually which will be refined at the Sable refinery. It effectively sees us up our copper production quite dramatically from a modest production of 250 t of copper cathode per month to more than 1 000 t of copper cathode per month,” Coetzer points out.

While the combination of Sable and Roan indicates a strong and solid copper recovery business in Zambia, it is just the start of what is already a bigger strategy in play. “Our current operations represent what we refer to as our fully integrated Southern Copper Refining Strategy,” Coetzer notes (southern representing the southern region of Zambia). “Our bigger focus, which is already in play, brings a Northern Refining Strategy into our overall objectives.”

Having already acquired various tailings material sources north of Ndola, Jubilee is looking to replicate its achievement in the south, in the north – but on a much larger scale. “We’ve outlined to the market that we will pursue adding another 15 – 17 000 tpa of copper on top of what we will produce in the south.

That initial target however is modest. It can be escalated quite rapidly if you look at the size and opportunities in the region. In fact, we believe it is feasible to potentially upscale to around 40 000 tpa and process and refine these quantities sustainably. Our success to do so will again in theory largely be determined by our demonstrated ability to turn perceived waste into value by establishing relationships with the current rights holders of the waste,” Coetzer states.

To date, Jubilee has secured rights to 161 Mt of tailings containing an estimated 374 714 t of copper in the northern territory. This resource is referred to as project Lechwe and targets the production of 7 500 t of copper units per annum at a dedicated newly constructed copper concentrator for further refining at the targeted Northern refinery at Kitwe.

“Project Lechwe, which forms the first link in the integrated Northern Refining Strategy, is our second planned copper processing facility (the second of three in the shorter term and four ultimately) in Zambia and final pilot runs are under way to confirm the design work. We are planning to reach our 7 500 tpa production by the second quarter of calendar 2023.”

The Northern Refining Strategy currently targets the production of an additional 15 000 t of copper but offers the potential to be significantly expanded based on the sheer size of opportunities offered in copper and cobalt recovery from waste in Zambia.

In connection with this, the company has also secured rights to 114 Mt of tailings containing an estimated 336 610 t of copper. Known as Project Elephant, the resource is situated within a 50 km radius of project Lechwe and is adjacent to the targeted Northern refinery at Kitwe.

It targets the production of 10 200 t of copper units per annum at a dedicated copper concentrator for further refining at the targeted Northern refinery. The tailings resource has been previously drilled and sampled to confirm both content and size containing on average 0.05% cobalt in addition to the copper content offering the potential to incorporate a cobalt refining circuit as part of the Northern refinery.

“We are thankful for the success we’ve had so quickly which can be attributed to our teams who are very focused and very experienced. We also believe we have sufficiently demonstrated to the Zambian authorities how we can formalise a new sector – drawing in investment and offering near-term sustained benefits to not only the Zambian economy but directly benefits communities and affected parties.”

Jubilee has taken a first mover advantage in developing what in essence could be described as a new industry in Zambia – reprocessing and refining wasted copper, and cobalt, and in so doing building a profitable business with significantly larger earnings while improving the country’s environmental footprint.

Source: Mining Review