Jubilee Metals Leon Coetzer
Jubilee Metals has completed the fine chrome recovery plant at the Dilokong Chrome Mine (DCM) and has started commissioning the plant, which the dual-listed company believes will open up many opportunities in the chrome industry.
CEO Leon Coetzer said on Tuesday that the DCM fine chrome plant was an "industry first".
"Our ability to target the recovery of the fine chrome element of existing mine waste material opens tremendous opportunities to Jubilee for further growth in the chrome industry,: he said in a statement.
Jubilee plans to roll out this solution at the company's existing operations at Hernic and PlatCro, as well as the wider chrome industry.
The DCM fine chrome recovery plant will target the recovery of about 620 000 t of chrome material contained in the exiting DCM tailings dam. The plant would be ramped up to 25 000 t/m of additional capacity over the next four weeks, targeting the production of 8 000 t/m of fine chrome concentrate.
The metals recovery company also reported that the preclassification and dewatering circuit at its PlatCro project had started producing PGM-rich material for refining at Northam’s Eland Platinum plant.
Production at PlatCro would be ramped up, targeting the production of 60 000 t/m of PGM-rich material, more than doubling Jubilee's current PGM processing rate.
The company recently announced its acquisition of the PlatCro chrome beneficiation operation, which it would integrate with its current PlatCro PGM project, forming a fully integrated operation.
Coetzer said that the addition of the PlatCro preprocessing plant to produce PGM-rich material for further refining at the Eland Platinum plant, was the first of a number of processing improvements targeted for the integrated PlatCro operation.