Tjate, one of the largest platinum/paladium mine in the world, about to be given mining licence to JLP, worth around $5bn
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from lse:
many major producers are watching JLP like hawk, and as soon as licence is granted, we should see several offers?? AQP which has much higher operating cost already been snapped. JLP next??
while platinum price is at the bottom (but is now slowly recovering), palladium price has been increasing rapidly (palladium price was around $800 in 2011 and dropped below $600 recently and now around $700 and continue moving up).
as a reminder, JLP has huge platinum and palladium reserves.
JLP website: Tjate mine consists of two parts
: Merensky= 8m oz (54% Pt, 29% Pd)
: UGS = 14m oz (37% Pt, 36%Pd)
so, the deeper section (UGS) has 36% Palladium ie 14mx0.36= 5m oz and even the shallower section Merensky has 29% palladium.
so, our palladium amount is huge and will benefit for any rise in palladium price (which even more so now that many are preferring gasoline engine compared to diesel engine. (note: palladium is used in gasoline engine and platinum in diesel engine)
nevertheless, diesel engine will still be in demand (despite slight setback) .
and as a reminder,
the NPV of 1.7bn calculated in the website is only for Merensky (and not including UGS).
so, thats mean, if NPV 1.7bn for 8m in Merensky, then for UGS would be 1.7/8*14 = 2.98bn
so, total Merensky+UGS = 1.7+2.98 = 4.7bn
ie, Tjare project = NPV $4.7bn !
note (at the time of writing)
price platinum per oz = $912
price palladium per oz = $711
once licence is granted, hopefully many major platinum will be keen to tap on huge Tjare resources.