Jubilee exploring potentially world-class deposit in Madagascar
Rhona O'Connell
'05-SEP-05 16:12'
LONDON (Mineweb.com) -- Jubilee Platinum, listed on AIM and with a market capitalisation at present of fractionally more than £30 million (US$55.5 million), is assembling a portfolio of properties with a focus on the platinum group metals. While the company’s major prospect is the Tjate project on the Bushveld in South Africa, which is contiguous to the Twickenham and Marula mines of Anglo Platinum and Impala respectively. The inferred resource at Tjate is 65 million ounces of platinum group metals and gold. Jubilee is also in joint venture with Golden Prospect plc (also listed on AIM) on the York platinum group metals project in Sierra Leone, in an area with a history of artisanal platinum production.
The latest news concerns Madagascar. Jubilee has been operating in Madagascar since 2002 and has 10-year exploration permits on more than 100,000 hectares of prospective concessions. It is currently working on three potentially world-class nickel / copper / PGM projects. These are the Londokomanana, Ambodilafa and Lanjanina. Londokomanana, which is the subject of the latest results, lies 150km to the north of the Madagascan capital Antananarivo.
Stream sediment and spoil sampling, trenching and geophysics have identified an inferred 22-kilometre total strike length of potential world-class magnitude nickel-copper mineralisation over Londokomanana.
Ambodilafa is showing a major, largely unexplored, ultrabasic intrusion, measuring roughly 20km north-south and four kilometres east-west. Previous research by the French government body Bureau de Récherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM) had included a 93 metre intersection of disseminated pentlandite and chalcopyrite sulphides averaging 1% copper content and a geophysics programme is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Gold grades have also been identified in the southwest corner of Ambodilafa.
At Londokomanana, the first borehole (LAV 1) in the new drilling programme has intersected a 70-metre wide formation at a depth of only 37 metres, and it looks as if this deposit has the scope to host a world class open-pittable resource at good grades.
The deposit is showing values for nickel, copper, platinum and palladium. The average grades over the entire width work out at 1.05g/t three PGE (i.e. platinum, palladium and gold), along with 0.23% nickel and 0.22% copper. The Pt:Pd ratio is one-to-one, which in terms of in situ metal compares very favourably with the majority of non-South African deposits, in which palladium is the predominant metal. If the PGE and nickel are taken as credits, then the copper equivalent grade was 1.56% (prices based on September 2) with an in-situ value of the total intersection of US$56/t of rock. The company notes that an industry-accepted model for a bulk mining operation producing not less than eight million tonnes per year is believed to be approximately US$20/tonne production cost, made up of approximately US$11 per tonne as direct operating cost and US$9 per tonne for capital recovery. The potential for early capital repayment and free cash flow is clear.
The grade increases with depth. Interesting intersections include 35.7 metres between 73 and 108 metres grading 0.99g/t three PGE, 0.31% nickel and 0.19% copper; at the deeper levels there is a six-metre interval (from 102m to 108m) grading 1.02 g/t three PGE, 0.47% nickel and 0.24% copper. The intersection confirms the geophysics model that the company had recently established and the combination of geophysics and sampling in the area suggests that the system may extend over 35 kilometres.
Chief Executive Officer Colin Bird has management experience in the natural resources industry and has previous corporate and financial experience in resource companies that have developed and financed projects in Spain, Latin America and Africa. He is currently a director of Lion Mining Finance. Other board members have experience in the platinum industry, largely through Anglo American, Matthey Rustenburg Refiners and JCI.
Bird’s assessment of the latest development is that: “The size and scope of this discovery bears all the fundamentals required for a world-class resource combining good grades with a suite of metals sought after in the market. The thickness of the intersection provides the potential for large-scale mining and the confirmation of our evolving model from the recent geophysics programme, suggests that Londokomanana could develop into a regional, as opposed to a local situation, with some 35 kilometres of ground, some of which has been tested with similar geophysics. Further drilling, some 180 metres south and along strike, is confirming continuity of the formation. Results will be released as soon as these become available”.
Clearly there is a long way to go yet, but early indications would suggest that Jubilee may well have found an elephant.
'05-SEP-05 16:12'
LONDON (Mineweb.com) -- Jubilee Platinum, listed on AIM and with a market capitalisation at present of fractionally more than £30 million (US$55.5 million), is assembling a portfolio of properties with a focus on the platinum group metals. While the company’s major prospect is the Tjate project on the Bushveld in South Africa, which is contiguous to the Twickenham and Marula mines of Anglo Platinum and Impala respectively. The inferred resource at Tjate is 65 million ounces of platinum group metals and gold. Jubilee is also in joint venture with Golden Prospect plc (also listed on AIM) on the York platinum group metals project in Sierra Leone, in an area with a history of artisanal platinum production.
The latest news concerns Madagascar. Jubilee has been operating in Madagascar since 2002 and has 10-year exploration permits on more than 100,000 hectares of prospective concessions. It is currently working on three potentially world-class nickel / copper / PGM projects. These are the Londokomanana, Ambodilafa and Lanjanina. Londokomanana, which is the subject of the latest results, lies 150km to the north of the Madagascan capital Antananarivo.
Stream sediment and spoil sampling, trenching and geophysics have identified an inferred 22-kilometre total strike length of potential world-class magnitude nickel-copper mineralisation over Londokomanana.
Ambodilafa is showing a major, largely unexplored, ultrabasic intrusion, measuring roughly 20km north-south and four kilometres east-west. Previous research by the French government body Bureau de Récherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM) had included a 93 metre intersection of disseminated pentlandite and chalcopyrite sulphides averaging 1% copper content and a geophysics programme is scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Gold grades have also been identified in the southwest corner of Ambodilafa.
At Londokomanana, the first borehole (LAV 1) in the new drilling programme has intersected a 70-metre wide formation at a depth of only 37 metres, and it looks as if this deposit has the scope to host a world class open-pittable resource at good grades.
The deposit is showing values for nickel, copper, platinum and palladium. The average grades over the entire width work out at 1.05g/t three PGE (i.e. platinum, palladium and gold), along with 0.23% nickel and 0.22% copper. The Pt:Pd ratio is one-to-one, which in terms of in situ metal compares very favourably with the majority of non-South African deposits, in which palladium is the predominant metal. If the PGE and nickel are taken as credits, then the copper equivalent grade was 1.56% (prices based on September 2) with an in-situ value of the total intersection of US$56/t of rock. The company notes that an industry-accepted model for a bulk mining operation producing not less than eight million tonnes per year is believed to be approximately US$20/tonne production cost, made up of approximately US$11 per tonne as direct operating cost and US$9 per tonne for capital recovery. The potential for early capital repayment and free cash flow is clear.
The grade increases with depth. Interesting intersections include 35.7 metres between 73 and 108 metres grading 0.99g/t three PGE, 0.31% nickel and 0.19% copper; at the deeper levels there is a six-metre interval (from 102m to 108m) grading 1.02 g/t three PGE, 0.47% nickel and 0.24% copper. The intersection confirms the geophysics model that the company had recently established and the combination of geophysics and sampling in the area suggests that the system may extend over 35 kilometres.
Chief Executive Officer Colin Bird has management experience in the natural resources industry and has previous corporate and financial experience in resource companies that have developed and financed projects in Spain, Latin America and Africa. He is currently a director of Lion Mining Finance. Other board members have experience in the platinum industry, largely through Anglo American, Matthey Rustenburg Refiners and JCI.
Bird’s assessment of the latest development is that: “The size and scope of this discovery bears all the fundamentals required for a world-class resource combining good grades with a suite of metals sought after in the market. The thickness of the intersection provides the potential for large-scale mining and the confirmation of our evolving model from the recent geophysics programme, suggests that Londokomanana could develop into a regional, as opposed to a local situation, with some 35 kilometres of ground, some of which has been tested with similar geophysics. Further drilling, some 180 metres south and along strike, is confirming continuity of the formation. Results will be released as soon as these become available”.
Clearly there is a long way to go yet, but early indications would suggest that Jubilee may well have found an elephant.
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