Jubilee Metals Group plc (LON:JLP) Chief Executive Officer Leon Coetzer caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their extraordinary growth, renewed interest from established financial institutions and what shareholders can expect in the short term.
Q1: 2020, it’s clearly been a successful year for Jubilee Metals Group, also recognised by the market. Can you continue to deliver this extraordinary growth, do you think?
A1: Well, yes, you’re quite right. In 2020, we enjoyed tremendous success, record earnings delivered for the company, couldn’t have come at a better time when we currently capitalising and investing, of course, the second part of our business, which is equally exciting and equally important for our group.
So, the short answer is yes, the copper and base metal side of our company is busy rolling out its project, we have our refinery running and our copper cobalt side running. The refinery is fully commissioned, operationally ready to accept the product from our first copper project, Project Rowan, which is set to start delivering material to our refinery already in this quarter as we roll out and step up our copper production going forward.
We told the market that we are setting a target for ourselves to deliver 25,000 tonnes of copper units per annum within the next three years and we’re certainly fully committed to achieve that target.
So, on the back of a rollout of our copper and cobalt into the group, we fully expect to deliver and continue to deliver the kind of growth and earnings growth that our shareholders have grown accustomed to expect from us.
Q2: It all sounds very positive, but are you finding renewed interest in the company from established financial institutions to support the growth?
A2: Yes, what we’ve found is, especially over the last year, and we’ve been working hard in the background to ensure that we continuously update and provide updates to these institutions, to recognise that the strategy we had set out in 2017 for the first part of our business, which is of course the platinum, palladium, rhodium, and the chrome side of our business, is delivering and is delivering above expectations and continue to deliver.
On the back of that foundation, we educated and continuously educate the institutions of, of course, the second part of our business which is equal size and in fact, has the potential to fall outgrow the first part of our business in the platinum/palladium space.
With the announcements last year, where our refinery became fully operational, where we’ve been successful in securing tremendous copper tailings resources to feed our strategy of achieving that 25,000 tonnes of copper units, we welcomed you year a highly respected financial institution into our shareholding.
Of course, we also grew the existing holding from institutions, so we are finally seeing that recognition, of course, we remain ever grateful for the support of our retail sector as we then slowly bring in more and more of institutions. I fully expect that more such institutions will follow as we now show that our copper and cobalt strategy is also gaining momentum into our group.
So, to answer exactly your first question to show that it’s not as if we’ve reached some plateau of earnings on the back of the significant growth we’ve had, but all we’ve really done is established a foundation for our next significant growth of our base metal side of the business.
Q3: Finally, what can shareholders expect from Jubilee Metals Group in the short term?
A3: Well, really, it’s delivery, delivery, delivery. Just the background, if it’s visible, you can see just slightly on the side here, what you see here is one large construction site and on this side is of course Inyoni PGM plant so shareholders can expect to see that expansion coming into operation.
Already, this quarter, we’ve started to commission a very large chrome beneficiation plant, adjacent to our Inyoni plant, we’re expanding our PGM business so shareholders can expect to see our South African side of operations going through yet another phase of growth.
The exciting part is the implementation of our copper strategy and we’ll certainly keep our shareholders up to date on the implementation of that copper and cobalt rollout as we all enjoy that journey, implementing a strategy that we’ve been speaking of for quite a while.
