Sylvania Platinum cracked it in the March quarter on both the operational and financial fronts but has warned of a set back to the newly commissioned chrome recovery operations in the current June quarter.
Sylvania recovers platinum group metals (pgm) from treating dump material at six processing plants located on the Western and Eastern limbs of the Bushveld Igneous Complex to which it recently added the Thaba JV which recovers chrome as well as pgm.
CEO Jaco Prinsloo reported all the various operations exceeded their respective business plans for the quarter and forecast that Sylvania was likely to achieve or beat the upper end forecast of pgm production guidance of 90,000 oz to 93,000 oz for the year to end-June.
But he noted problems with the Thaba JV post the end of the March quarter have caused a revision in chrome concentrate production to between 50,000 and 55,000 tons for the year to end-June.
Thaba continued its ramp-up during the March quarter increasing chrome production to 19,030t (December quarter – 10,531t) but, so far in the June quarter, the operation has been hit by lower feed tonnage running at lower grades.
Prinsloo added “abnormally high rainfall during April” also hit mine production because of flooding and material handling problems with the wet ore.
He commented, “the focus remains on improving mine planning, scheduling optimisation, and mining standards to improve ROM (run-of-mine) feed quality, plant feed stability and throughput and enhancing processing efficiencies as we progress towards steady-state operations.”
On the financial front Sylvania reported a 28% increase in its US dollar pgm gross basket price which, together with $4m in attributable chrome sales, pushed net revenue to $78.7m (December quarter – $54.8m).
Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) jumped 61% to $47.8m (December quarter – $29.8m) and Sylvania remains debt-free holding $63.3m in cash at end-March.
