JSE- and Aim-listed Jubilee Platinum last week announced that it would acquire a brownfield smelting facility, in Middelburg, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, for $14-million, to become the first site of its ConRoast furnace build programme.
The platinum-group metals development company had entered into an agreement with the Thos Begbie company to acquire its 70% stake in Thos Begbie Holdings (TBH), which owned the smelting facility, for $10-million in cash.
Further, it had also entered into agreements with a number of trusts, which held a 30% stake TBH, to acquire their shareholding in a $4-million share or cash call option.
Jubilee would have until December 31, 2010, to exercise the call option for the trusts’ shares in TBH.
Jubilee saw the acquisition as a “key step” towards fast-tracking the commercialisation of its ConRoast process, which was developed by South Africa’s Mintek, and which had been licensed exclusively to Jubilee’s 100%-owned Braemore Resources subsidiary until 2020.
“This acquisition will lead to short-term cash flow and will significantly reposition Jubilee in the platinum arena. We are convinced that the industry now acknowledges the necessary role ConRoast will have in smelting primary and secondary high-chrome platinum concentrates,” Jubilee CEO Colin Bird said in a statement.
Jubilee noted that the site had significant usable infrastructure, power and skilled labour to allow for the installation of the first 5-MW ConRoast dc arc furnace.
The site had a 10-MW gas-powered generator facility and a separate 6-MW municipal power supply.
Jubilee was already evaluating tenders for the engineering, construction, procurement and management for installation of a 5-MW ConRoast facility with downstream refining, it added.