Diversified miner Jubilee Metals, a “leader” in metals processing with operations in Africa, in November provided an operational and corporate update on its Inyoni platinum-group metals (PGMs) project in South Africa, “following a period of significant progress”.

Jubilee noted that it had completed the $21-million construction and commissioning of the extensive upgrade capitalisation programme of the Inyoni PGMs operation.

Jubilee’s PGMs operations offer exposure to a full PGMs basket of metals, which includes Platinum, Palladium and Rhodium which have seen record high prices of late.

Moreover, the upgrade programme has significantly enhanced Inyoni’s processing capability by providing the flexibility to process a variety of third-party PGM feed materials, making it one of the only large-scale PGM plants capable of processing blended ores.

The capitalisation programme was undertaken over an 11-month period and included a chrome recovery circuit, together with a new feed blending and classification circuit, with a significantly expanded PGMs recovery circuit, which has the capability, based on its design, to process up to 75 000 t/m of chrome- and PGMs-rich material.

“Inyoni is now uniquely positioned to capitalise on the variety of PGM feed materials offered to the market,” Jubilee stated.

Jubilee’s PGMs operational target for the current financial period remains at 50 000 PGM oz, despite the interruptions to operations during the construction and commissioning of the upgrade programme.

Jubilee noted that its PGMs operations consist of the Inyoni and Windsor JV PGMs operations. Traditionally, the Inyoni Operations were largely focused on the processing of historical tailings stockpiled at the operations. The financial distress suffered by Hernic Ferrochrome, that ultimately resulted in the sale of its business in late 2019, highlighted the risk of the dependency of the PGMs operation on such a single source feed stream, in terms of creating a long-term sustainable operation. Consequently, the company last year made the decision to significantly enhance the Inyoni operation to form a PGMs processing facility that offered the flexibility to process a wide range of PGMs feed and tailings materials under PGMs supply agreements from a variety of clients. The company added that it continues to review the available options to expand its processing footprint into South Africa’s eastern limb of the Bushveld Complex – a PGMs-bearing region.